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Blackadder vocabulary
5 birds and/or bird terms
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pelican
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synonyms: Pelecanus onocrotalus ???
tags: [avian] [christianity]
► definition
Definition:a bird, the effigy of which was used in the Middle Ages to symbolise charity; generally represented as wounding its breast to feed its young with its own blood, and which became the image of the Christ who shed His blood for His people.Rev. James Wood. The Nuttall Encyclopedia (1907)
photo: By Soerfm - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30521674audio: by Marco Dragonetti, XC331139. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/331139Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
► uses
Uses:
Blackadder: Oh God! Bills, bills, bills. One is born, one runs up bills, one dies! And what have I got to show for it? Nothing. A butler's uniform and a slightly effeminate hairdo! Honestly Baldrick, I sometimes feel like a pelican - whichever way I turn, I've still got an enormous bill in front of me.
BBC. Blackadder Season 3: Amy and Amiability.
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We are no sooner out of the shell but we resemble the coccyx which destroys itself through self will, or the pelican which pierces a wound in her own breast.
John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
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his hand on my arm was light and strong as a pelican’s wing.
Diana Gabaldon. Outlander (1991)
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