Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "bananaquit" []

  • A bird, Coereba flaveola, possibly close to some American sparrows and finches. (noun)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

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."