Flightless

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unable to fly.; Describing kinds of birds that normally cannot fly, such as the penguin, ostrich, and emu. not-comparable, usually

    "Near-synonyms: apterous, wingless"

  2. 2
    Unable to fly.; Describing an individual bird that normally would be able to fly but in this case cannot, such as an injured sparrow. not-comparable, uncommon

    "The animal shelter has a flightless sparrow named Shiny, who seems to make up for his disability by being an avid runner."

  3. 3
    Unable to fly.; Suddenly deprived of a scheduled (airline) flight by its cancellation. humorous, not-comparable, uncommon

    "Oh great, some wind is blowing in Chicago, so now I'm flightless in Seattle, because this airline can't cope!"

Adjective
  1. 1
    incapable of flying wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
apterousnonflyingnonvolantunflyingwinglesswingless

Example

More examples

"The kiwi is a flightless bird of comparable size to the chicken."

Etymology

From flight + -less.

Related phrases

New Guinea flightless railflightless cormorant

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.