What does pheasant mean?
Word: Pheasant
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Pheasant means a large bird with a long tail that lives in forests and grassland; the male is often brightly coloured.
Word origin: Comes through French and Latin from Greek, after a river in Georgia, near the Black Sea, where the birds were found.
How do you spell pheasant?
Syllables: pheas - ant
Tricky part: The short e sound after ph is spelt with two letters, ea, as in feather and health, not with e alone.
Watch out for: phesant, phezant
Memory tip: A pheasant's feathers look heavy with colour: feather, heavy and pheasant all spell their short e as ea.
Pheasant in a sentence
Example 1: A pheasant burst out of the tall grass and flew low over the tea garden.
Example 2: On our trek in Himachal, the guide pointed out a pheasant scratching for seeds under the oaks.
Example 3: The male pheasant's copper and green feathers shone in the morning light.
Fun Fact
The Himalayan monal, the state bird of Uttarakhand, is a pheasant; the male's feathers shine green, blue and copper in sunlight.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Twins
Choose the correct option to fill in the blanks:
1. The ___ tilled his small field with a pair of oxen. 2. A ___ with long copper tail feathers ran into the bushes.
a) pheasant/peasant
b) 'pheasant' in both
c) peasant/pheasant
d) 'peasant' in both
Show answer
c) peasant/pheasant. A farm worker of the past is a peasant; the long-tailed bird is a pheasant.
Spellacadabra
Choose the correct option to make a meaningful word:
___easant
a) ph
b) gh
c) f
d) ff
Show answer
a) ph. Like many words that came from Greek, the bird's name writes its f sound as ph.
Word Puzzle
Match each word with its meaning:
1. pheasant 2. heron 3. kestrel a. a small falcon that hovers over fields b. a ground-dwelling bird with long tail feathers c. a grey wading bird with long legs
a) 1-c, 2-a, 3-b
b) 1-a, 2-c, 3-b
c) 1-b, 2-c, 3-a
d) 1-c, 2-b, 3-a
Show answer
c) 1-b, 2-c, 3-a. The pheasant is the long-tailed ground bird, the heron wades on long legs, and the kestrel is the hovering falcon.
Spell Spies
Choose the incorrectly spelt word:
a) pheasent
b) vacant
c) pleasant
d) crescent
Show answer
a) pheasent. The bird's name ends in -ant, the same ending as pleasant; crescent and vacant are spelt correctly.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which feature would help you tell a male pheasant from a crow?
a) its long, brightly coloured tail
b) its habit of eating scraps
c) its loud, harsh call
d) its plain black feathers
Show answer
a) its long, brightly coloured tail
2. A bird-watcher says the peacock is a close relative of the pheasant. This tells us that peacocks and pheasants ___.
a) cannot fly at all
b) live only near water
c) belong to the same bird family
d) are always the same colour
Show answer
c) belong to the same bird family
