turnstone
noun
turnstone is a noun meaning “Either of two species of coastal wading bird, Arenaria interpres and Arenaria melanocephala, that breed in the Arctic and readily turn stones or…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-U-R-N-S-T-O-N-E, and it appears about once in every 33 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of turnstone is turnstones.
What does turnstone mean?
noun
- 1
Either of two species of coastal wading bird, Arenaria interpres and Arenaria melanocephala, that breed in the Arctic and readily turn stones or seaweed looking for hidden invertebrates.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of turnstone
- turnstones plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is turnstone?
Turnstone appears about once in every 33 million words in written English, the 176,009th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Turnstone in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense coastal wading bird:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Steinwälzer |
| Spanish | vuelvepiedras |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does turnstone come from?
From turn + stone.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).