ROBIN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does robin mean? 

• ROBIN (noun)
  The noun ROBIN has 2 senses:

1. small Old World songbird with a reddish breast

2. large American thrush having a rust-red breast and abdomen

  Familiarity information: ROBIN used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ROBIN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Small Old World songbird with a reddish breast

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

Erithacus rubecola; Old World robin; redbreast; robin; robin redbreast

Hypernyms ("robin" is a kind of...):

thrush (songbirds characteristically having brownish upper plumage with a spotted breast)

Holonyms ("robin" is a member of...):

Erithacus; genus Erithacus (Old World thrushes)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Large American thrush having a rust-red breast and abdomen

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

American robin; robin; Turdus migratorius

Hypernyms ("robin" is a kind of...):

thrush (songbirds characteristically having brownish upper plumage with a spotted breast)

Holonyms ("robin" is a member of...):

genus Turdus; Turdus (type genus of the Turdidae)

 Context examples 

Robin, thou red-headed lurden, how oft must I tell thee not to shoot straight with a quarter-wind blowing across the mark?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then, to complicate the ruin, she cut it down one third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world to try its fate.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Men all in a panic of fear; sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

“That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,” said my aunt, “Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast—as he is—“It's a boy.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Robin Wordsworth, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering, said: "Early Mars is unique in the sense that it's the one planetary environment, outside Earth, where we can say with confidence that there were at least episodic periods where life could have flourished.

(Methane Gas May Have Caused Greenhouse Effect on Young Mars, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer—the honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his little party that night.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)