settings
Hamlet vocabulary
6 birds and/or bird terms
help & settings
[x]
-
chough
-
tags: [avian]
► definition
Definition:a Eurasian bird in the crow family that sounds like it is playing a 1980's video game. It once had a reputation for stealing small objects from houses. King Arthur was transformed into one, thus it is unlucky to kill one.
photo: By Ken Billington, [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 )],sound file:by Victor C. Lewis [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 )],
► uses
Uses:
MAM. The whole nest are fled!
LOVE. What sort of birds were they?
MAM. A kind of choughs,
Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick'd my purse
Of eight score and ten pounds within these five weeks,
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
---
Edg. Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still. How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
Shakespeare. King Lear.
---
'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile. Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess. 'Tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet.
---
that frind of my boozum, leaning on my cubits, at this passing moment by localoption in the birds’ lodging, me pheasants among, where I’ll dreamt that I’ll dwealth mid warblers’ walls when throstles and choughs to my sigh hiehied, with me hares standing up well and me longlugs dittoes, where a maurdering row, the fox!
James Joyce. Finnegans Wake
help with search