Flamingo

How to spell flamingo

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce flamingo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flamingo mean?

1. nounA tall wading bird with long legs, a curved bill, and distinctive pink or reddish plumage.

Flamingo in a sentence

• A single flamingo stood balanced on one leg in the shallow lagoon.

• The zoo built a heated enclosure to keep each flamingo comfortable through winter.

Where does flamingo come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word comes into English around the end of the 1500s from the Portuguese flamingo and the related Spanish flamenco, names given to the tall wading bird because of its vivid pink and reddish plumage. At the root sits the Latin flamma, meaning 'flame', so the bird was effectively nicknamed 'the flame-coloured one'. The same fiery root lies behind everyday English words such as 'flame', 'flammable' and 'inflammation', which can help fix the opening 'flam-' in memory. There is a charming secondary theory that the Spanish form was influenced by Flamenco, the word for a Fleming or Flemish person, supposedly because Flemish people were thought of as ruddy and lively, though the flame colouring remains the more reliable explanation. The spelling trap is the middle, since the unstressed 'a' sounds like a vague schwa and the '-ingo' ending is easy to muddle, but remembering the flame keeps the first vowels honest.

How the word is built

• flam- (from Latin flamma: flame)
• -ingo (noun suffix, via Portuguese/Spanish)