WREN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Wren mean? 

• WREN (noun)
  The noun WREN has 2 senses:

1. English architect who designed more than fifty London churches (1632-1723)

2. any of several small active brown birds of the northern hemisphere with short upright tails; they feed on insects

  Familiarity information: WREN used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WREN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

English architect who designed more than fifty London churches (1632-1723)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Sir Christopher Wren; Wren

Instance hypernyms:

architect; designer (someone who creates plans to be used in making something (such as buildings))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any of several small active brown birds of the northern hemisphere with short upright tails; they feed on insects

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

jenny wren; wren

Hypernyms ("wren" is a kind of...):

passeriform bird; passerine (perching birds mostly small and living near the ground with feet having 4 toes arranged to allow for gripping the perch; most are songbirds; hatchlings are helpless)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "wren"):

Troglodytes troglodytes; winter wren (small wren of coniferous forests of northern hemisphere)

house wren; Troglodytes aedon (common American wren that nests around houses)

marsh wren (a wren of the genus Cistothorus that frequents marshes)

rock wren; Salpinctes obsoletus (wren inhabiting badlands and mesa country of western United States and Mexico)

Carolina wren; Thryothorus ludovicianus (large United States wren with a musical call)

cactus wren (large harsh-voiced American wren of arid regions of the United States southwest and Mexico)

Holonyms ("wren" is a member of...):

family Troglodytidae; Troglodytidae (wrens)

 Context examples 

But the young wrens said: “We will not eat yet, the bear must come to the nest, and beg for pardon and say that we are honourable children, before we will do that.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up at him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does Mr. Rochester.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to settle beneath the fox’s tail, and sting with all his might.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren's nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

When the young wrens heard that, they were frightfully angry, and screamed: “No, that we are not! Our parents are honest people! Bear, you will have to pay for that!”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

In reality the bird was the willow-wren.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

And now at last the young wrens were satisfied, and sat down together and ate and drank, and made merry till quite late into the night.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

When the gnat had heard that, she flew away again, and revealed everything, down to the minutest detail, to the willow-wren.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

When the time came for the war to begin, the willow-wren sent out spies to discover who was the enemy’s commander-in-chief.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

And the willow-wren summoned everything which flew in the air, not only birds, large and small, but midges, and hornets, bees and flies had to come.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)