English
bird
Bird comes from Middle English bird, brid, from Old English bridd ‘chick, fledgling’, of unknown origin; the sense widened from chicks to birds generally.
- Old Englishc. 450–1150bridd1‘chick’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500bird1
- Englishearliest quotation 1526bird1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English bird
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1526, [William Tyndale, The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible): “[…] the foxes have holes, and the brydds of…”.
Lineage
- Old Englishc. 450–1150briddWiktionary, English bird‘chick’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500birdWiktionary, English bird
- Englishearliest quotation 1526birdWiktionary, English bird. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1526, [William Tyndale, The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible): “[…] the foxes have holes, and the brydds of…”
The story
From Middle English bird, brid, from Old English bridd (‘chick, fledgling, chicken’), of uncertain origin (see Old English bridd for more).uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain. Gradually replaced fowl as the most common term starting in the 14th century. The "booing/jeering" and "vulgar hand gesture" senses derived from the expression “to give the big bird”, as in “to hiss someone like a goose”, dated in the mid‐18th century.
Every English word from Old English bridd
Today it means
noun An animal of the clade (traditionally class) Aves in the phylum Chordata, characterized by being warm-blooded, having feathers and wings usually capable of flight, having a beaked mouth, and laying eggs.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “bird”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Old English bridd / bird