finch

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various relatively small birds of the family Fringillidae, including the goldfinches, sparrows, cardinals, grosbeaks, and canaries, having a short stout bill adapted for cracking seeds.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The chaffinch; any bird of the genus Fringilla or family Fringillidæ, of which the species are very numerous; a bunting, sparrow, grosbeak, etc. See Fringillidæ.
2. n. Any small conirostral oscine passerine bird, as of the family Ploceidæ or Tanagridæ; a weaver-bird or tanager.
3. n. Loosely, in composition, some other small bird, as the fallow-finch.
4. n. Peucæa cassini, a kind of summer finch of southwestern parts of the United States: named for the same.
5. n. The yellow-hammer.
6. n. The Texas sparrow, Embernagra rufovirgata. See Embernagra.
7. n. A misnomer of the Canadian sparrow or tree-sparrow, Spizella monticola.
8. n. The snow-bunting, Plectrophanes nivalis, in the plumage of winter, or of the female and young male.
9. n. The pine-siskin, Chrysomitris pinus: so called from its fondness for the seeds of the pine.
10. An obsolete contracted form of finish.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any bird of the family Fringillidae, seed-eating passerine birds, native chiefly to the Northern Hemisphere and usually having a conical beak.
2. v. To hunt for finches, to go finching.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) A small singing bird of many genera and species, belonging to the family Fringillidæ.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any of numerous small songbirds with short stout bills adapted for crushing seeds