Ornis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term often used in biological contexts to denote birds or the study of avian species
2. Referring to the classification or characteristics associated with the avian group
3. Pertaining to elements related to birds in natural history or zoology

Etymology: "Ornis" is a word for the collective body of birds in a region, the avifauna of a place considered as a whole. It is borrowed from German "Ornis," which was itself taken from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις" (órnis), meaning "bird." The Greek noun gave rise to a stem "ornith-" in its oblique forms, which is why the root appears in so many bird-related scientific terms, such as ornithology. German naturalists adopted the Greek word in the same scholarly way that they and their English-speaking counterparts borrowed classical roots for describing the natural world. In the Greek, the word was a plain everyday term for a bird, and the collective sense seen in the German and English usage is a later refinement, applied by researchers who needed one word for all the species living together in a given area.

Synonyms: bird