house sparrow

noun

|Updated on: 16 May 2018

Definition of house sparrow

: a sparrow (Passer domesticus) native to Eurasia that has been introduced worldwide and is found especially in urban and agricultural areas — called also English sparrow

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Recent Examples of house sparrow from the Web

Sometimes, house sparrows are captured and relocated.

— john kelly, Washington Post, "It’s going to be hard for me to complain about other people’s leaf blowers," 6 May 2018
For the sparrows study, Andrew and his team captured and measured about 40 adult house sparrows at each of 30 locations across Australia and New Zealand.

— marlene cimons, Washington Post, "Hot temperatures made these birds shrink," 21 Apr. 2018
But house sparrow and European starling threats remain.

— barbara boyer, Philly.com, "As bluebirds flock to South Jersey, groups work to make their locations feel like home," 5 Feb. 2018
But the group has recently launched an aggressive campaign against a postdoc at Yale University studying stress in wild house sparrows who is still near the beginning of her scientific career.

— giorgia guglielmi, Science | AAAS, "Top stories: A Viking warrior woman, PETA’s targeting of postdocs, and where spacecraft go to die," 15 Sep. 2017
That means they can be taken any time, along with house sparrows and starlings.

— bill monroe, OregonLive.com, "Sewage spill may threaten some sturgeon fishing Thursday," 25 Oct. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'house sparrow.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.