Did you mean Black swan?
Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. An Australian swan whose feathers are black.
- n. An occurrence believed impossible or not to exist.
- n. An occurrence believed impossible or not to exist, subsequently shown to exist.
WordNet 3.0
- n. large Australian swan having black plumage and a red bill
Examples
““Wallabah”; of black swan he observed hundreds, as well as ducks, “a small but excellent kind,” which flew in thousands, and “an abundance of most kinds of wild fowl.””
The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders
“In 1697, a Dutch sea captain chanced upon a black swan in Australia, at which point the null hypothesis was proven true and the white swan theory had to be discarded.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘black swan’.
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Creatures of My Town 2
Critters observed by me in and around Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Native wildlife only.
corella, pademelon, swift parrot, Pacific gull, kookaburra, silver gull, black swan, bettong, pied oystercatcher, cormorant, possum, green rosella
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I Am A Starfish. I Speak With Paint.
List title totally stolen from she. Right, the stock entry for this list should be a two-word phrase where one of the words denotes a colour; even better if the expression has some metaphoric value...
black dog, tangerine dream, orange roughy, blue moon, blackguard, white house, purple rain, grey nurse, green thumb, yellow fever, sacre bleu, palo verde and 156 more...
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Homeland Security
Words associated with homeland security
resilience, terrorism, preparedness, catastrophe, fear, radicalization, intelligence, security theater, bogeyman, Weapons of mass d..., Critical infrastr..., Emergence and 45 more...
bilby All swans are black. Oct 12, 2008
reesetee Ooh, yeah. True! I'd never connected the two. Oct 17, 2007
chained_bear I think the presence of black swans in Australia also was taken as further evidence of Australia being literally the antipodes--in the sense of being completely backward/opposite from everything Europeans had "known." At least, they were still talking about that 20 years ago in Australia (maybe they're over it by now?).... Oct 17, 2007
reesetee Interesting, sionnach. I never knew this.
And by the way, black swans are lovely. Oct 17, 2007
sionnach In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's definition, a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations.
The term black swan comes from the ancient Western conception that all swans were white in color. In that context, a black swan was a metaphor for something that could not exist. The 17th Century discovery of black swans in Australia metamorphosed the term to connote that the perceived impossibility actually came to pass.
The term was introduced by Karl Popper in the context of the falsifiability of the statement "All swans are white". Oct 17, 2007