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Added 3 October 2026

fowl

/faʊl/ noun

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about fowl at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Any bird.
A bird hunted or kept for food, grouped into landfowl (order Galliformes), also called gamefowl, and waterfowl (order Anseriformes: ducks, geese, swans, etc.), which together form the clade Galloanserae.

verb

To hunt fowl.
We took our guns and went fowling.
To use or traverse in pursuit of fowls.

Origin

From Middle English foul, foghel, fowel, fowele, from Old English fugol (“bird”), from Proto-West Germanic *fugl, from Proto-Germanic *fuglaz, dissimilated variant of *fluglaz (compare Old English flugol ‘fleeing’, Mercian fluglas heofun ‘birds of the air’), from *fleuganą (“to fly”). Cognate with West Frisian fûgel, Low German Vagel, Dutch vogel, German Vogel, Swedish fågel, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk fugl. Doublet of voël. More at fly.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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