bird of passage - definition and meaning

Log in or Sign up

bird of passage love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

n. A migratory bird.
n. A person who moves from place to place frequently.

Wiktionary

n. A migratory bird, especially a passage migrant.
n. figuratively Someone passing through; an itinerant.

GNU Webster's 1913

n. a migratory bird.

WordNet 3.0

n. any bird that migrates seasonally
n. someone who leads a wandering unsettled life

Etymologies

After Middle French oiseau de passage. (Wiktionary)

Examples

“(Heb. chasidah), a large bird of passage of the heron family.”

Smith's Bible Dictionary
“The pewit, or black cap flycatcher, of Catesby, is the first bird of passage which appears in the spring in Pennsylvania, which is generally about the first, or”

Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing An Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians.

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘bird of passage’.

ENVI - Collocations ABC

An extract from the "Zold Tolmacs" project, a HU-EN environmental dictionary compiled by Robert Gulyas in 2000.

AA battery, aa lava, aapa mire, abandon the project, abandon the sewer..., abandoned car, abandoned dyke, abandoned farm, abandoned field, abandoned industr..., abandoned industr..., abandoned land and 5386 more...
Animal bipes implume

Specific use of the word bird to describe those featherless bipeds with the broad nails. (From Plato's description of man. See chicken.)

bird, gallows bird, yard bird, jailbird, bird colonel, bird of passage, birdbrain, birdman, firebird, lovebird, Birdman of Alcatraz, railbird and 8 more...
on the road again

nomad, itinerant, wanderer, gypsy, vagrant, ranger, floater, gadling, scatterling, landloper, wayfarer, rover and 59 more...
Wirds of a Feather

Phrases and figures of speech in which birds are featured. Or feathers. Or such like.

a little bird tol..., to have an albatr..., birds of a feathe..., in the catbird seat, cold turkey, to cook one's goose, don't count your ..., to have one's duc..., to eat crow, a feather in one'..., for the birds, flip the bird and 122 more...
Word Pairs

pair of words used together always

road hog, cozy up, get stoned, cropping up, snowed under, cap-a-pie, lock-step, wet blanket, underdog, gatecrasher, guinea pig, wallflower and 9 more...
code names

numinous, mercurial, kinetic, pastiche, necropolis, frieze, chiaroscuro, melisma, efflorescence, saturnine, fabric, milquetoast and 75 more...

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

cosmican A person who travels from one place to another, or hops from one job, etc. to another Nov 19, 2007

Tweets

Looking for tweets for bird of passage.