Pronunciation: têr-dê-form • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Shaped like a thrush; resembling a thrush.
Notes: I am really very cleanIf you would feel a little awkward using this Good Word in conversations with your friends, there are two other variants with the same meaning, turdoid and turdine. All these adjectives can also mean "belonging to the family turdus," as do the song-thrush (Turdus musicus), Santa's favorite, the mistletoe thrush (Turdus viscivorus), and others. If you are a genuine thrush-fancier, you will want to keep your thrushes in a specially constructed turdarium. However, if you put other varieties in with your thrushes, you can't call it that any more.
In Play: This is a good word with which to attract attention to yourself in discussions with bird-watchers: "I saw an interesting little turdiform flyer in my backyard yesterday but it was green and pileated. Have any idea what it might have been?" The many types of birds that resemble thrushes provide plenty of work for today's word: "Do you happen to know the name of the lovely little turdiform creature sitting on the birdfeeder right now?"
Word History: This rather startling word comes from a Latin compound based on turdus "thrush" + forma "form". The root of turdus started out as *trozdos "thrush", but the [r] and the vowel metathesized, i.e. changed places, in Latin. In Germanic languages these two sounds held their positions and produced English thrush, German Drossel "thrush", with the diminutive suffix -el, and the Russian word, drozd "thrush".
–Dr. Goodword, Alpha Dictionary
Thrushlike works just fine for me!"I do hereby comdemn this unfortunate word to the forgotten annals of that particular branch of biology called ornithology. Let this word neither be seen nor heard outside the bounds of that specialized scientific study of birds!
Sitran Apoclima, May 31, 2005"
Apo