Emu

How to spell emu

3 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce emu

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emu mean?

1. nounA large, fast-running flightless bird native to Australia, second in size only to the ostrich.

Emu in a sentence

• The wildlife park keeps one emu in a fenced paddock near the entrance.

• A single emu can sprint faster than most people can run.

Where does emu come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word comes from the Portuguese ema, a term that originally described various large birds, including the crane and the cassowary, rather than the bird we now picture. Portuguese explorers and traders carried the word eastward, and English adopted it in the early 1600s, gradually attaching it to the tall flightless bird of Australia. The spelling settled into the short, tidy 'emu' in English, losing the Portuguese 'a' ending. It is unrelated to the larger ostrich of Africa or the rhea of South America, although all three are sometimes lumped together in casual speech. The compactness of the word, just three letters, is what makes people second-guess it: writers occasionally reach for 'emo' or 'emoo', so anchoring it to the bird's name helps fix the single 'u'.

How the word is built

• emu (single unanalysable root; no prefix or suffix)