white-eye

[ hwahyt-ahy, wahyt- ]

noun,plural white-eyes.
  1. any of numerous small, chiefly tropical Old World songbirds of the family Zosteropidae, most of which have a ring of white feathers around the eye: several species are endangered.

Origin of white-eye

1
First recorded in 1840–50

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use white-eye in a sentence

  • "Old Calamity" was a roan, with one wicked white eye, that in his best days had done a hundred miles in ten hours.

    Sevenoaks | J. G. Holland
  • Sides of lower mandible conspicuously grooved; entire plumage sooty brown, except a white eye-ring.

  • Head slaty; throat and breast grayish; an inconspicuous white eye-ring.

  • Similar to No. 679, but with an incomplete white eye-ring showing above and below eye.

  • The black and white eye-spots are not real eyes, but to a bird they doubtless seem so.

    Book of Monsters | David Fairchild and Marian Hubbard (Bell) Fairchild

British Dictionary definitions for white-eye

white-eye

noun
  1. Also called (NZ): blighty, silvereye, tauhou, waxeye any songbird of the family Zosteropidae of Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, having a greenish plumage with a white ring around each eye

  2. any of certain other birds having a white ring or patch around the eye

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012