Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Animals, especially the animals of a particular region or period, considered as a group.
  • noun A catalog of the animals of a specific region or period.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The total of the animal life of a given region or period; the sum of the animals living in a given area or time: a term corresponding to flora in respect of plants: as, the fauna of America; a fossil fauna; the recent fauna; the land and water faunæ of the globe.
  • noun A treatise upon the animals of any geographical area or geological period.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) The animals of any given area or epoch

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable animals considered as a group; especially those of a particular country, region, time, etc.
  • noun countable a book, cataloguing the animals of a country etc.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun all the animal life in a particular region or period
  • noun a living organism characterized by voluntary movement

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin Fauna, sister of Faunus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

New Latin, from Latin Fauna, sister of Faunus 'god of forests and herdsmen'; akin to Ancient Greek θαῦνον (thaunon, "wild animal, beast"), thýs 'jackal, wild dog; panther', Phrygian dáos 'wolf'.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word fauna.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.