avifauna means the birds, or all the kinds of birds, inhabiting a region. It carries an Arena rating of 1478, earned across 35 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, avifauna ranks #2,428 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #4,229 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #5,191 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #5,311 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
Why “avifauna” is a great word
AVIFAUNA — [Noun] The collective bird species inhabiting a particular region, period, or environment, considered as a distinct ecological unit. From New Latin, from Latin avis ("bird") + New Latin fauna ("animals"), from Latin Faunus ("god of herdsmen"). First recorded in 1870–75. Unlike the general "fauna," which encompasses all animal life from shrews to snakes, or the clinical "ornis," a more aridly technical synonym, "avifauna" carves out a specific, aerial realm. It is the layered cacophony of a dawn chorus in an old-growth forest, the stark silhouettes of raptors circling a desert mesa, and the frantic, jewel-toned blur of parrots in a tropical canopy—the collective signature of a place, written in feather and song.
Etymology
From New Latin, from Latin avis (“bird”) + New Latin fauna (“animals”), from Latin Faunus (“god of herdsmen”).
noun
- The birds, or all the kinds of birds, inhabiting a region.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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