Colluricincla
col-lu-ri-SINK-luh
Genus
shrike-thrush (a bird combining the character of a shrike with that of a thrush/wagtail)
Literally: shrike-wagtail
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| colluri- | a small bird, the shrike; from Greek kollurion (κολλύριον), Aristotle's name for a shrike-like bird | Greek (via New Latin) (Collurio) | Collurio is the established shrike genus name; the segment colluri- is borrowed whole from it rather than being independently decomposable as coll- + uri- |
| -o- | connecting vowel (elided before the following vowel, but retained here as the stem vowel of Collurio-) | linking element | |
| -cincla | the wagtail (Cinclus); by extension any small oscine bird, used in New Latin for thrushes | Greek (cincl, -o, =us) | feminine nominative singular ending -a creates the genus name; the Greek original is kinklos (κίγκλος) |
A New Latin compound genus name formed by joining the stem of Collurio (Boie 1826, the shrike genus) to -cincla (from Greek kinklos, wagtail/thrush). The whole word is treated as a feminine noun in the nominative singular, following the convention for New Latin genus names. The name encapsulates the bird's dual nature: it behaves like a shrike but looks like a thrush.
Pronunciation
- col-lu-ri-SINK-luh Penult rule 5: the penult vowel 'i' in '-cin-' is short but is followed by two consonants (nc), so the penult is stressed.
Other readings
A purely compositional reading coll- (Greek, glue) + uri- (Greek, tail) + -cincla is technically possible from the dictionary matches but makes no biological or historical sense; the ornithological literature uniformly treats colluri- as the shrike stem.
The root collurio / kollurion is not entered as its own term in the dictionary; it is known from classical ornithological literature (Aristotle, Historia Animalium) and established as a genus by Boie (1826). Marked [not in dictionary], confidence high. The genus Colluricincla (shrike-thrushes) is native to Australasia; the name was coined by Vigors & Horsfield (1827). Final -a is pronounced as a short 'uh', following the rule that final -a is not long.