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

woodpecker - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

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

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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/
  • (Australia, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈwʊdˌpekə/
  • (Scotland) IPA: /ˈwʉdˌpɛkəɾ/
  • (Northern Ireland) IPA: /ˈwʉdˌpɛkəɻ/
  • Hyphenation: wood‧peck‧er

Printed 2026-09-02.

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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 ‎, volume LXVIII, number 7, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College, →OCLC, page 333: ↩

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

Link to original

Secondary

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