A bird, Coereba flaveola, possibly close to some American sparrows and finches.(noun)
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Use "bananaquit" in a sentence
"The word bananaquit struck me; I couldn't find it in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate or the American Heritage Dictionary, but it was in the New Oxford American Dictionary:bananaquit /bəˈnanəˌkwit/ a small songbird with a curved bill, typically with a white stripe over the eye, a sooty gray back, and yellow underparts."
"The latter entry says "in combination used in names of various small songbirds found in the Caribbean area, e.g. bananaquit, grassquit" and adds that the word is "probably imitative.""
"The AOU retains the Bannaquit as the only member of the Coerebidae, but the most recent evidence associates it with a group of tanager- or finch-like birds that build domed nests, including grassquits probably the closest to the bananaquit, the Orangequit of Jamaica, West Indian "bullfinches" and the Galapagos finches."