Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Pheasant
/ˈfɛzənt/noun
A long-tailed game bird, the male brightly coloured, widely introduced for shooting.
The Greek roots
φασιανός
phasianós
of the river Phasis
Literally: “bird of the Phasis”
Follow a root:φασιανός1 word
The story of the word
The bird is named after a river. The Phasis ran through Colchis into the Black Sea, in what is now Georgia, and Greek writers said the bird came from its banks, carried west by the Argonauts in one telling. Latin phasianus and Old French faisan passed the name along, and the Normans brought both bird and word into England. The scientific name Phasianus colchicus still points straight at Colchis.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
In a sentence
A pheasant walked out of the hedge and stood in the road, entirely unbothered.