silbo
Spanish, noun
silbo is spelled S-I-L-B-O (5 letters) and appears about once in every 7 million words in written Spanish, the 99,300th most frequent Spanish word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Silbo is a Spanish masculine noun meaning “whistle, whistling (sound, act of whistling)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is also a first-person singular present indicative of silbar. With an accent, silbó is a different word: “third-person singular preterite indicative of silbar”. The Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario) defines it as “Sonido agudo que hace el aire”.
What does silbo mean in English?
noun
- 1
masculinewhistle, whistling (sound, act of whistling)
verb
- 1
first-person singular present indicative of silbar
verb
- 1
third-person singular preterite indicative of silbar
Source: English Wiktionary, Spanish section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How Spanish dictionaries define it
noun: 1. Sonido agudo que hace el aire. 2. Sonido agudo que resulta de hacer pasar con fuerza el aire por la boca con los labios fruncidos o con los dedos colocados en ella convenientemente. 3. Sonido de igual clase que se hace soplando con fuerza en un cuerpo hueco, como silbato, llave, etc. 4. Voz aguda y penetrante de algunos animales; como la de la serpiente.
The definition in the Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario), in Spanish.
Source: Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of silbo
- silbos plural
Source: English Wiktionary and Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How common is silbo in Spanish?
silbo appears about once in every 7 million words in written Spanish.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).