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budgerigar
noun
Examples of budgerigar in a Sentence
Word History
probably borrowed from a word in the Australian Indigenous language Gamilaraay or another language of the Central Inland New South Wales group (first recorded as betcherrygah), later confounded with budgeree "good, fine" (in New South Wales Pidgin) taken as descriptive of the bird
Note: Early independently collected recordings of this bird name from New South Wales in the 1840's were betcherrygah (recorded by John Gould, pioneer of Australian ornithology), budgeeregor (though transcription is uncertain), bugerrigang, and bidgerigung (see details in David Nash, "The Smuggled Budgie: Case Study of an Australian Loanblend" in Robert Mailhammer editor, Lexical and Structural Etymology: Beyond Word Histories [De Gruyter, 2013], pp. 293-311). Peculiarly, later records of Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay, another language of the Central New South Wales group, show a different word, gidjirrigaa, as the name for Melopsittacus undulatus, with no surviving record of the name recorded by Gould and others. This presumed instability may be related to the fact that the bird was a relative novelty in this area of New South Wales (the Liverpool Plains) before a major irruption in the year before it was seen by Gould.
1840, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near budgerigar
Cite this Entry
“Budgerigar.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/budgerigar. Accessed 6 Dec. 2024.
Kids Definition
budgerigar
noun
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