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[burd] /bɜrd/

noun
1.
Larry, born 1956, U.S. basketball player.
/bɜːd/
noun
1.
any warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrate of the class Aves, characterized by a body covering of feathers and forelimbs modified as wings. Birds vary in size between the ostrich and the humming bird related adjectives avian ornithic
2.
(informal) a person (usually preceded by a qualifying adjective, as in the phrases rare bird, odd bird, clever bird)
3.
(slang, mainly Brit) a girl or young woman, esp one’s girlfriend
4.
(slang) prison or a term in prison (esp in the phrase do bird; shortened from birdlime, rhyming slang for time)
5.
a bird in the hand, something definite or certain
6.
(informal) the bird has flown, the person in question has fled or escaped
7.
(euphemistic or jocular) the birds and the bees, sex and sexual reproduction
8.
birds of a feather, people with the same characteristics, ideas, interests, etc
9.
(informal) get the bird

10.
(informal) give someone the bird, to tell someone rudely to depart; scoff at; hiss
11.
kill two birds with one stone, to accomplish two things with one action
12.
like a bird, without resistance or difficulty
13.
a little bird, a (supposedly) unknown informant: a little bird told me it was your birthday
14.
(informal) for the birds, strictly for the birds, deserving of disdain or contempt; not important
/bɜːd/
noun
1.
nickname of (Charlie) Parker
n.

Old English bird, rare collateral form of bridd, originally “young bird, nestling” (the usual Old English for “bird” being fugol), of uncertain origin with no cognates in any other Germanic language. The suggestion that it is related by umlaut to brood and breed is rejected by OED as “quite inadmissible.” Metathesis of -r- and -i- was complete 15c.

Middle English, in which bird referred to various young animals and even human beings, may have preserved the original meaning of this word. Despite its early attestation, bridd is not necessarily the oldest form of bird. It is usually assumed that -ir- from -ri- arose by metathesis, but here, too, the Middle English form may go back to an ancient period. [Liberman]

Figurative sense of “secret source of information” is from 1540s. Bird dog (n.) attested from 1832, a gun dog used in hunting game birds; hence the verb (1941) meaning “to follow closely.” Bird-watching attested from 1897. Bird’s-eye view is from 1762. For the birds recorded from 1944, supposedly in allusion to birds eating from droppings of horses and cattle.

A byrde yn honde ys better than three yn the wode. [c.1530]

“maiden, young girl,” c.1300, confused with burd (q.v.), but felt by later writers as a figurative use of bird (n.1). Modern slang meaning “young woman” is from 1915, and probably arose independently of the older word.

“middle finger held up in a rude gesture,” slang derived from 1860s expression give the big bird “to hiss someone like a goose,” kept alive in vaudeville slang with sense of “to greet someone with boos, hisses, and catcalls” (1922), transferred 1960s to the “up yours” hand gesture (the rigid finger representing the hypothetical object to be inserted) on notion of defiance and contempt. Gesture itself seems to be much older (the human anatomy section of a 12c. Latin bestiary in Cambridge describes the middle finger as that “by means of which the pursuit of dishonour is indicated”).
bird
(bûrd)
Any of numerous warm-blooded, egg-laying vertebrate animals of the class Aves. Birds have wings for forelimbs, a body covered with feathers, a hard bill covering the jaw, and a four-chambered heart.

Our Living Language : It is generally believed that birds are descended from dinosaurs and probably evolved from them during the Jurassic Period. While most paleontologists believe that birds evolved from a small dinosaur called the theropod, which in turn evolved from the thecodont, a reptile from the Triassic Period, other paleontologists believe that birds and dinosaurs both evolved from the thecodont. There are some who even consider the bird to be an actual dinosaur. According to this view, the bird is an avian dinosaur, and the older dinosaur a nonavian dinosaur. Although there are variations of thought on the exact evolution of birds, the similarities between birds and dinosaurs are striking and undeniable. Small meat-eating dinosaurs and primitive birds share about twenty characteristics that neither group shares with any other kind of animal; these include tubular bones, the position of the pelvis, the shape of the shoulder blades, a wishbone-shaped collarbone, and the structure of the eggs. Dinosaurs had scales, and birds have modified scales—their feathers—and scaly feet. Some dinosaurs also may have had feathers; a recently discovered fossil of a small dinosaur indicates that it had a featherlike covering. In fact, some primitive fossil birds and small meat-eating dinosaurs are so similar that it is difficult to tell them apart based on their skeletons alone.

modifier

noun

Related Terms

early bird, for the birds, gooney bird, have a bird, jailbird, lovebirds, off one’s nut, railbird, take off like a bigass bird, whirlybird, yardbird

[homosexual senses may be based on or be revived by Yiddish faygele, ”homosexual,” literally ”bird”]

Birds are divided in the Mosaic law into two classes, (1) the clean (Lev. 1:14-17; 5:7-10; 14:4-7), which were offered in sacrifice; and (2) the unclean (Lev. 11:13-20). When offered in sacrifice, they were not divided as other victims were (Gen. 15:10). They are mentioned also as an article of food (Deut. 14:11). The art of snaring wild birds is referred to (Ps. 124:7; Prov. 1:17; 7:23; Jer. 5:27). Singing birds are mentioned in Ps. 104:12; Eccl. 12:4. Their timidity is alluded to (Hos. 11:11). The reference in Ps. 84:3 to the swallow and the sparrow may be only a comparison equivalent to, “What her house is to the sparrow, and her nest to the swallow, that thine altars are to my soul.”