''woodpecker'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260902143140-00-⌔

woodpecker - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

🖼️ ➺

pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

🖼️ ➺

heart-spotted woodpecker (Hemicircus canente), Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, Kerala, India

🖼️ ➺

Red-crowned woodpecker (Melanerpes rubricapillus) Female both M. r. rubricapillus, Colombia

Noun

woodpecker (plural woodpeckers)

• Any bird of the species-rich family Picidae, with a strong pointed beak suitable for pecking holes in wood.
  • ✤ Synonym: speight (obsolete, dialectal)
  • ✤ Hypernym: picid
  • ✤ On its summit towered aloft the fir tree which has often been referred to, like a mighty mast, full of woodpeckers’ holes.¹
  • ✤ His skin was scarlet like the head of the green woodpecker.²
  • ✤ An adult female of this rare woodpecker was taken at 6,000 feet in April 1925 near Chingchuan in the forests of northern Szechuan.³
  • ✤ Birdwatchers would enjoy a host of sparrows, a herd of swans, a descent of woodpeckers, a herd of wrens, and mutation of thrushes.⁴
• (military slang) A Type 92 heavy machine gun.

Etymology

From wood + pecker. Compare Middle English wod spek (“woodpecker”), Middle English wodehake (“woodpecker”), Middle English wodewale (“woodpecker”). Displaced speight.

Pronunciation

• enPR: wo͝odʹpĕ’kər
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈwʊdˌpɛkə/
• (Standard Southern British) IPA: /ˈwɵdˌpɛkə/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (US) IPA: /ˈwʊdˌpɛkɚ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Australia, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈwʊdˌpekə/
• (Scotland) IPA: /ˈwʉdˌpɛkəɾ/
• (Northern Ireland) IPA: /ˈwʉdˌpɛkəɻ/
• Hyphenation: wood‧peck‧er

Printed 2026-09-02.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1886, Peter Christen Asbj&oslash￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 89: ↩

2. 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 19: ↩

3. 1928 August, Outram Bangs, James L. Peters, “Birds Collected by Dr. Joseph F. Rock in Western Kansu and Eastern Tibet”, in Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume LXVIII, number 7, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College, →OCLC, page 333: ↩

4. 1984, Virginia Wildlife, volume 45, Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries: ↩