Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Informal One who is destined or deserves to be hanged.
Wiktionary
- n. archaic A person who deserves to be, or is likely to be hanged.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. [Colloq.] a person who deserves the gallows.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person who deserves to be hanged
Etymologies
- Compare virtually identical French construction gibier de potence, and similar English jailbird. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Hereupon the King called his sworder of vengeance, who came with his lads, and said to him, “Take this gallows bird and strike off his head and after do the like with this harlot and burn their bodies, and consult me not about them a second time.””
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gallows bird’.
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Dirty Deeds, Acts & Villainous Arcana
Villains, evildoers, and the wonderful words to describe them.
putsch, internecine, galère, stygian, infernal, opprobrium, anathema, bruit, scurrility, mulct, misanthropic, invective and 102 more...
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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...
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Gems from 1811 Dictionary of the Vulg...
Citation: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, unabridged from the original 1811 edition, with a foreword by Max Harris. London: Bibliophile Books, 1984.
Original title page: A Dictio...tuzzy-muzzy, half seas over, hugger mugger, hugotontheonbiqui..., doodle sack, juniper lecture, kate, kent street eject..., jack ketch, davy, abel-wackets, three-legged mare and 370 more...
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Noah's Park
Hello, and Welcome™! Come and visit our most diverse land of our Animalesque™ adventures. Here at Noah's Park™ we have Virtually All You'd Ever Want To See™. An experience that is related to ani...
sheep's eyes, doe-eyed, cat-eyed, bug-eyed, cat's paw, black swan, leapfrog, menagerie, cold turkey, card shark, snail's pace, bull's eye and 362 more...
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The Ultimate Guide to Animal Insults
Now, I'm not trying to promote name-calling here, don't get me wrong; but let's face it...sometimes people can natter on like popinjays or pester you like gnatflies- and you should at least know wh...
buzzard, dodo, gadfly, gallows bird, gilt, grimalkin, jackal, louse, popinjay, shrew, tomcat, vixen and 17 more...
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skipvia's Words
syzygy, egg, lossy, catharsis, impuissance, truckle, obsequious, sequoia, sonot khazoot, alizarin, sepulchre, klister and 434 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gallows bird.
jinglebelljosie n: a person who is destined or deserves to be hanged Aug 15, 2008