Contextualizebeta

gallows bird

noun

Etymology

From gallows + bird. Compare German construction Galgenvogel (literally “gallows-fowl" or "gallows-bird”), and French gibier de potence, as well as similar English jailbird.

  1. inherited from bridd — “chick, fledgling, chicken”
  2. inherited from bird
  3. formed as gallows bird — “gallows + bird”

Definitions

  1. A person who deserves, or is likely, to be hanged.

    • Everybody along Long Wharf knows you called him a gallows bird. He's not used to it.
    • The story of the man who bit off his father's nose for rearing him as a gallows bird is as old as Aesop, but no known source before Brant mentions the son's name.
    • Before me stood not Philippe but a gallows bird no respectable citizen would want to meet up with on a lonely road.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gallows bird. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA