Emberizid

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Any small seed-eating songbird belonging to the bunting and sparrow family known as Emberizidae, found across the Americas, Europe and Asia
2. A finch-like perching bird classified within the Old and New World bunting family Emberizidae, typically with a conical bill suited to eating seeds
3. Describing or relating to a member of the large songbird family Emberizidae, which includes buntings, American sparrows and towhees

Etymology: The word traces back to "Emberiza," the genus name for the buntings, which Carl Linnaeus used in his classification of animals. The name is generally thought to come from a German word for these birds, "Ammer," which is probably related to the Old English root behind "yellowhammer," a common British name for the yellowhammer bunting. The exact route from the German word to the Latin genus name is uncertain. The ending is the part that makes it a zoological term. Taxonomists form family names by adding "-idae" to a genus name, and that ending comes from Greek patronymic suffixes meaning "descendant of." "Emberizidae" is the family of buntings and New World sparrows, and "emberizid" is the English adjective and noun for a member of that family.