Heron

How to spell heron

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce heron

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does heron mean?

1. nounA tall wading bird with long legs, a long neck, and a sharp pointed bill, usually found near water.

Heron in a sentence

• A grey heron stood motionless at the edge of the pond.

• The heron speared a fish from the shallow river with one quick strike.

Where does heron come from?

Language of origin: French

Heron entered English in the 1300s from the Old French word hairon, which named the same long-legged wading bird. The French form itself came from a Frankish word reconstructed as haigro, of Germanic origin, and that ancient root is thought to imitate or evoke the bird's harsh, croaking call. Old English had its own related name for the bird, hragra, drawn from the same Germanic family, but the French borrowing eventually won out in standard usage. The spelling settled with the single 'r' and the unstressed second syllable that swallows its vowel, which is the small trap when writing it down. A curious relative is the heraldic and surname element seen in words like 'egret', which arrived by a separate but parallel route and refers to closely related birds.

How the word is built

• heron (single root; from Old French hairon, no productive prefix or suffix)