different between bird vs beaver

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: bû(r)d, IPA^(key): /b??d/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /b?d/, [b??]
  • (NYC) IPA^(key): [b??d]
• (Indian English) IPA^(key): /b?d/
• Rhymes: -??(?)d

Etymology 1

From Middle English brid, from Old English bird, brid, bridd (“young bird, chick”), of uncertain origin and relation. Gradually replaced fowl as the most common term starting in the 14th century.

The "booing/jeering" and "vulgar hand gesture" senses derived from the expression “to give the big bird”, as in “to hiss someone like a goose”, dated in the mid?18th Century.

Noun

bird (plural birds)

1. A member of the class of animals Aves in the phylum Chordata, characterized by being warm-blooded, having feathers and wings usually capable of flight, having a beaked mouth, and laying eggs.
   • 2004, Bruce Whittington, Loucas Raptis, Seasons with Birds, page 50:

     The level below this is called the Phylum; birds belong to the Phylum Chordata, which includes all the vertebrate animals (the sub-phylum Vertebrata) and a few odds and ends.

2. (slang) A man, fellow. [from the mid-19th c.]
   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, page 24:

     The door opened and a tall hungry-looking bird with a cane and a big nose came in neatly, shut the door behind him against the pressure of the door closer, marched over to the desk and placed a wrapped parcel on the desk.

   • 2006, Jeff Fields, Terry Kay, A cry of angels

     "Ah, he's a funny bird," said Phaedra, throwing a leg over the sill.

3. (Britain, US, Australia, slang) A girl or woman, especially one considered sexually attractive.
   • 1809, Thomas Campbell, Lord Ullin's Daughter

     And by my word! the bonny bird / In danger shall not tarry.

   • 2013, Russell Brand, Russell Brand and the GQ awards: 'It's amazing how absurd it seems' (in The Guardian, 13 September 2013)[2]

     The usual visual grammar was in place – a carpet in the street, people in paddocks awaiting a brush with something glamorous, blokes with earpieces, birds in frocks of colliding colours that if sighted in nature would indicate the presence of poison.

   • 2017, David Weigel, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock, W. W. Norton & Company.

4. (Britain, Ireland, slang) Girlfriend. [from the early 20th c.]
5. (slang) An airplane.
6. (slang) A satellite.
   • 1988, Satellite communications. Jan-Oct. 1988

     Deployment of the fourth bird "should ensure that Inmarsat has sufficient capacity in orbit in the early 1990s, taking into account the possibility of launch failures and the age of some of the spacecraft in the Inmarsat first generation system

   • 1992, Cable Vision

     Will a government- backed APSTAR satellite knock out a planned AsiaSat II bird?

   • 2015, John Fuller, Thor's Legions: Weather Support to the U.S. Air Force and Army, 1937-1987, Springer ?ISBN, page 384

     In reality, the Air Force was never able to place a bird in orbit that quickly.

7. (obsolete) A chicken; the young of a fowl; a young eaglet; a nestling.
   • 1494–1536, William Tyndale, Bible, Matthew 8:20

     The brydds [birds] of the aier have nestes.

8. (Britain, with definite article, especially in expressions such as 'give someone the bird') Booing and jeering, especially as done by an audience expressing displeasure at a performer.
9. (with definite article) The vulgar hand gesture in which the middle finger is extended.

   Synonym: the finger

   • 2002, The Advocate, "Flying fickle finger of faith", page 55.

     For whatever reason — and there are so many to chose from — they flipped the bird in the direction of the tinted windows of the Bushmobile.

   • 2003, James Patterson and Peter De Jonge, The Beach House, Warner Books, page 305,

     Then she raised both hands above her shoulders and flipped him the bird with each one.

10. A yardbird.

Synonyms

• (member of class Aves): fowl, avian
• (man): chap, bloke, guy
• (woman): broad, chick, dame, girl, lass
• See also Thesaurus:woman
• See also Thesaurus:girl

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:bird

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• birb
• burd
• chirp
• ornithic
• ornithology
• squawk
• tweet
• Appendix: Animals
• Appendix:Gestures/middle finger

Verb

bird (third-person singular simple present birds, present participle birding, simple past and past participle birded)

1. (intransitive) To observe or identify wild birds in their natural environment.
2. (intransitive) To catch or shoot birds.
3. (intransitive, figuratively) To seek for game or plunder; to thieve.
   • 1610, Ben Jonson, The Alchemist

     These day-owls. That are birding in men's purses

Etymology 2

Originally Cockney rhyming slang, shortened from bird-lime for "time".

Noun

bird (plural birds)

1. (slang, uncountable) A prison sentence.

Synonyms

• (prison sentence): porridge, stretch, time

Translations

Verb

bird (third-person singular simple present birds, present participle birding, simple past and past participle birded)

1. (transitive, slang) To bring into prison, to roof.

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “bird”, in Online Etymology Dictionary
• bird on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Aves on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Aves on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• bird at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• drib

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?bi?v?/
• (General American) enPR: b??v?r, IPA^(key): /?biv?/
• Rhymes: -i?v?(?)
• Homophones: Belvoir, bever, bevor

Etymology 1

From Middle English bever, from Old English beofor (“beaver”), from Proto-Germanic *bebruz (“beaver”) (compare West Frisian bever, Dutch bever, French bièvre, German Biber, dialectal Swedish bjur), from Proto-Indo-European *b?éb?rus (“beaver”) (compare Welsh befer, Latin fiber, Lithuanian b?bras, Russian ???? (bobr), Avestan ????????????????????????? (bauura), ????????????????????????? (bauuri), Sanskrit ????? (bábhru, “mongoose; ichneumon”)), from Proto-Indo-European *b?erH- (“brown”). Related to brown and bear.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers or beaver)

1. A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet.
2. A hat, of various shapes, made from a felted beaver fur (or later of silk), fashionable in Europe between 1550 and 1850.
   • 1856-1858, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip II

     a broad beaver slouched over his eyes

   • 1896: For the White Rose of Arno by Owen Rhoscomyl

     The woman's hair and woman's beaver had both been jerked off, exposing the cropped head of a man...

3. (vulgar, slang) The pubic hair and/or vulva of a woman.
   • 2010 Dennis McFadden, Hart's Grove: Stories

     […] once she wore none at all, swears to this day that he saw her beaver that fateful Friday night.

4. The fur of the beaver.
5. Beaver cloth, a heavy felted woollen cloth, used chiefly for making overcoats.
6. A brown colour, like that of a beaver (also called beaver brown).

7. (slang) A man who wears a beard.
   • 1936 P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas:

     The beards were false ones. I could see the elastic going over their ears. In other words, I had fallen among a band of criminals who were not wilful beavers, but had merely assumed the fungus for purposes of disguise.

Synonyms

• (hat): castor, castoreum (archaic)
• (fur): castorette
• (cloth): castor

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Animals

Etymology 2

See bevor.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers)

1. Alternative spelling of bevor (“part of a helmet”)
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act I, Scene 1,^[1]

     Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,

     Is either slain or wounded dangerously;

     I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:

   • 1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XII, lxvii:

     With trembling hands her beaver he untied, / Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face.

   • 1951 Adaptation of the 1885 Ormsby translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, correcting Ormsby as to the portion of the helmet referred to by Cervantes (see Note 11 to Chapter II) at the suggestion of Juan Hartzenbusch, a 19th Century Director of the National Library of Spain.

     They laid a table for him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughble sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him.

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness, Faber & Faber 1992, p.128:

     As each one brings a little of himself to what he sees you brought the trappings of your historic preoccupations, so that Monsieur flattered you by presenting himself with beaver up like Hamlet's father's ghost!

Further reading

• beaver on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Castor on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• beaver on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• The Manual of Heraldry, Fifth Edition, by Anonymous, London, 1862, online at [2]

References