thunderbird

Etymology

It is a compound from English thunder + bird.^[2][3][4] For the bird of Native American myth, Etymonline takes it as a translation of words in several Native American languages, such as Ojibwa, Lakota and Klamath.^[2] In Lakota, "the thunderbirds call" is the usual way of saying that it thunders.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

An Australian bird, a kind of shrike or thickhead: before 1827, in Caley's note in the Transactions of the Linnean Society that the colonists called the species Thunder-bird because it was very noisy when it began to thunder.^[5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates this sense to about 1827,^[6] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1820–30.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline dates the mythical bird, whose flapping wings cause the thunder in some Native American cultures, to 1848.^[2] In Canada the word was used for the bird of the legends of many Indigenous peoples, which made thunder with its beating wings and lightning with its flashing eyes;^[7] an account written in 1878 explains thunder as the noise of a thunderbird seizing a whale and struggling with it.^[7] The word also came to mean a carved or painted figure of the bird, as on the totem poles of the Pacific Coast peoples.^[7][6] In Australia it still names the golden whistler and the rufous whistler, which call in response to thunder and other loud noises.^[8][9]

Timeline

• 1827 – an Australian bird that is noisy when it thunders; recorded before that year.^[5][6]
• 1848 – a mythical bird that causes thunder, in Native American belief.^[2]
• 1878 – the thunderbird of Indigenous legend, in a Canadian account of Vancouver Island.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (Australia) The golden whistler or the rufous whistler, songbirds that call at the sound of thunder.^[6][9][8]
2. A huge mythical bird that brings thunder, lightning and rain in the beliefs of several Native American and other Indigenous peoples of North America: The elder told the children how the thunderbird beat its wings over the mountains.^{[10][6][11][7]}
3. A carved or painted figure of this bird with its wings spread, as on a totem pole.^[6][7]

Related words

• thunder
• bird

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
5. ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f Dollinger, Stefan, ed., A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (online), Vancouver: University of British Columbia, dchp.arts.ubc.ca
8. ^ a b Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins