Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small conirostral granivorous finch-like bird, of the order Passeres, suborder Oscines, family Ploceidœ, subfamily Spermestinœ; the Estrilda amandava, a native of India, and one of the commonest exotic cage-birds.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) The strawberry finch, a small Indian song bird (Estrelda amandava), commonly caged and kept for fighting. The female is olive brown; the male, in summer, mostly crimson; -- called also red waxbill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The strawberry finch, a small Indian songbird (Estrelda amandava), commonly caged and kept for fighting.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun red Asian weaverbirds often kept as cage birds

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Indian name. From Ahmedabad, a city from which the bird was imported to Europe.

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Examples

  • The red munia, or amadavat, or _lal_ (_Estrelda amandava_) is, next to the paroquet, the bird most commonly caged in India.

    A Bird Calendar for Northern India Douglas Dewar 1916

  • Bonelli's eagle, the tawny eagle, the brown fish-owl, the rock horned-owl, the raven, the amadavat and the white-throated munia.

    A Bird Calendar for Northern India Douglas Dewar 1916

  • The nest of this little bird is more loosely put together and more globular than that of the amadavat.

    A Bird Calendar for Northern India Douglas Dewar 1916

  • The nest of the amadavat is large for the size of the bird, being a loosely-woven cup, which is egg-shaped and has a hole at or near the narrow end.

    A Bird Calendar for Northern India Douglas Dewar 1916

  • This family includes the weaver-birds, famous for their wonderful hanging retort-shaped nests, and the munias, of which the amadavat or _lal_ is familiar to every resident of India as a cage bird.

    Birds of the Indian Hills Douglas Dewar 1916

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