Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several large flightless birds of the genus Casuarius of Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent areas, having a large bony projection on the top of the head and brightly colored wattles.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A large struthious bird of the genus Casuarius, subfamily Casuariinæ, and family Casuariidæ, inhabiting Australia and the Papuan islands. It resembles the ostrich, and is nearly as large, but has shorter and thicker legs in proportion, and three toes. It is characterized by a ratite sternum, plumage with large aftershafts, rudimentary wings represented externally by several spine-like processes, fleshy caruncles or lappets upon the throat, and a large casque or helmet upon the head. It runs with great rapidity, outstripping the swiftest horse. The cassowary leaves its few eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sun.
Wiktionary
- n. A large flightless bird of the genus Casuarius, native to Australia and New Guinea, with a characteristic bony crest on its head, and can be very dangerous.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A large bird, of the genus Casuarius, found in the east Indies. It is smaller and stouter than the ostrich. Its head is armed with a kind of helmet of horny substance, consisting of plates overlapping each other, and it has a group of long sharp spines on each wing which are used as defensive organs. It is a shy bird, and runs with great rapidity. Other species inhabit New Guinea, Australia, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. large black flightless bird of Australia and New Guinea having a horny head crest
Etymologies
- Malay kesuari.
Examples
“When they plant their taro gardens, they call the cassowary “Truly Big Man” and “Truly Important One” instead.”
““For birders, the cassowary is their holy grail,” Mick tells me as we share tea on the veranda overlooking the garden.”
“A relative of the ostrich, the cassowary is a large flightless bird that eats fruit and is famous for getting hit by traffic and for producing large, dense scats.”
Wired: Filmmaker Errol Morris Gets to the Truth Behind the Abu Ghraib Photographs
“There are not any large mammals in Australia and the cassowary is the biggest animal there!”
“Feeling that ordinary language is insufficient to convey his _courteous_ and _chivalrous_ sentiments, he ransacks natural history in search of a sublime metaphor: his triumphant success he records in this beautifully expressed sentence -- "The dilating power of the anaconda and the gizzard of the cassowary are the highest objects of his ambition.”
Lands of the Slave and the Free Cuba, the United States, and Canada
“The bird seen by the party was a species of cassowary, which is found in”
“Told that the cassowary is a bird, a program written in Church might conclude that cassowaries can probably fly.”
“The office was shut for lunch and as we had just passed a beachside restaurant advertising pizzas, decided the sighting of the cassowary was a cause for celebration.”
TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
“But your emu, it seems, stands six feet high on his stocking soles, and is little better than a kind of cassowary or ostrich.”
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford
“I had to slow right down, as there were cassowary warning signs everywhere (a cassowary is a rare bird, looks a bit like an emu with a blue turkey head!”
TravelPod.com TravelStream? ? Recent Entries at TravelPod.com
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cassowary’.
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Davenport
words looked up recently from reading Guy Davenport
flenite, sampan, provender, comitatus, cycladic, surd, scialytic, lignite, plangencies, fugal, zamindary, macaque and 112 more...
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tHe Best Animals Ever
giraffe, elepant, cattle, water buffalo, langur monkey, baboon, lion, antelope, cheetah, tapeworm, kangaroo, bullfrog and 95 more...
jaime_d From "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" by Guy Davenport:
"And on a fine English day in the high Victorian year 1868, the year of the first bicycle race and the Trades Union Congress at Manchester, of The Moonstone and The Ring and the Book and of the siege of Magdela, four men gathered at Ashley House in London, a house leafy with Virginia creeper, its interior harmoniously dark and bright, like an English forest, dark with corners and doors and halls, with mahogany and teak and drapes as red as cherries, bright with windows, Indian brass, and lamps like moons, Lord Lindsay pollskepped with the hatchels of a cassowary, Lord Adare whose face looked like a silver teapot, and the galliard Captain Wynne." Jan 19, 2010
chained_bear "'Do you think it really useful to discuss these remote hypotheses? If you were to ask me about the tertian ague or the osteology of the cassowary I could give you a reasonable answer...'"
—Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 358 Feb 9, 2008