culver

See also: Culver

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlvə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌlvə

Etymology 1

From Middle English culver, from Old English culufre, culfre, culfer, possibly borrowed from Vulgar Latin *columbra, from Latin columbula (“little pigeon”), from Latin columba (“pigeon, dove”).

Noun

culver (plural culvers)

1. (now UK, south and east dialect or poetic) A dove or pigeon, now specifically of the species Columba palumbus.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Had he so doen, he had him snatcht away, / More light then Culuer in the Faulcons fist.

   • c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665):

     The palsie plagues my pulses
     when I prigg yoͬ: piggs or pullen
     your culuers take, or matchles make
     your Chanticleare or sullen

   • 1885, The book of the thousand nights and a night Vol. 5, Richard Burton:

     a culver of the forest, that is to say, a wood-pigeon.

Synonyms

• wood pigeon, wood-pigeon, woodpigeon

Derived terms

• culverhouse
• culverkey
• culvertail
• culvertailed

 

Translations

poetic: dove or pigeon

• Finnish: kyyhky (fi)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: due (no) m or f

Columba palumbus — see wood pigeon

Etymology 2

From culverin.

Noun

culver (plural culvers)

1. A culverin, a kind of handgun or cannon.
   • 1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:

     Falcon and culver on each tower / Stood prompt their deadly hail to shower.

Translations

culverin — see culverin

Middle English

Alternative forms

• colvere, colvore, colvre, cullfre, culvere, culvre

Etymology

From Old English culufre, culfre, culfer, borrowed from Vulgar Latin *columbra, from Latin columbula.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkulvər/

Noun

culver (plural culveres or culveren)

1. A dove (Columba spp.)
   • c. 1395, John Wycliffe, John Purvey [et al.], transl., Bible (Wycliffite Bible (later version), MS Lich 10.)‎^[1], published c. 1410, Joon 2:16, page 45r, column 2; republished as Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament, Lichfield: Bill Endres, 2010:

     And he ſeide to hem þat ſelden culueris / take ȝe awei from hennes þeſe þingis .· ⁊ nyle ȝe make þe hous of my fadir an hows of marchaundiſe

     And he said to those who sold doves: "Take those things out of here; you won't make my father's house a place of business!"

2. An affectionate term of familiarity.

Synonyms

• douve

Descendants

• English: culver

References

• “culver, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.