Falcon
nounA swift bird of prey with long pointed wings, often trained to hunt other birds and small animals.
How to spell falcon
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce falcon
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does falcon mean?
- nounA swift bird of prey with long pointed wings, often trained to hunt other birds and small animals.
Falcon in a sentence
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The falcon folded its wings and dived at the pigeon below.
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A trained falcon returned to the keeper's gloved hand.
Where does falcon come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word descends from the Late Latin falco, with the stem falconis, meaning a bird of prey of the falcon kind. A widely held explanation links it to the Latin falx, meaning 'sickle' or 'curved blade', a fitting image for the bird's hooked beak and sharply curved talons, though some scholars suspect a Germanic source instead. English took the word in the 1200s through Old French faucon, which is why the older spelling 'faucon' or 'fawcon' had no 'l' and the letter long stayed silent in speech. Scribes later restored the 'l' to mirror the Latin original, leaving the modern spelling with a letter that many speakers still do not pronounce. The same root gave French and Italian their words for the bird, and the trained falcon at the heart of medieval falconry kept the term alive in English for centuries.
How the word is built
- falc- (from Latin falco: falcon, perhaps from falx 'sickle', for the curved talons)
- -on (noun ending)
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