ornithic

American  

[awr-nith-ik] / ɔrˈnɪθ ɪk /

adjective

1. of or relating to birds.

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ornithic British  

/ ɔːˈnɪθɪk /

adjective

1. of or relating to birds or a bird fauna

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Etymology

Origin of ornithic

1850–55; < Greek ornīthikós birdlike, equivalent to ornīth- ornith- + -ikos -ic

Example Sentences

Senate gallery, bird watchers often observe that Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse has a notably ornithic look�a sharp beak, darting, saucerish eyes, a tufted head.

From Time Magazine Archive

Every claw and phalange has left its mark in the stone; while the trifid termination of the tarso-metatarsal bone leaves three marks more,—fifteen in all,—the true ornithic number.

From The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed by Miller, Hugh

Yet the interval between them is completely filled, in the mesozoic fauna, by birds which have reptilian characters, on the one side, and reptiles which have ornithic characters, on the other.

From The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology by Huxley, Thomas Henry

Those great reptilian lords, the biped Saurians of the Mesozoic, already foreshadowed his erect posture, though their limbs may have been more ornithic than mammalian.

From The Chain of Life in Geological Time A Sketch of the Origin and Succession of Animals and Plants by Dawson, Sir J. William

Ornithodel′phia, the lowest of the three sub-classes of mammals, same as Monotremata—from the ornithic character of the urogenital organs.—adjs.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various