culver

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlvə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌlvə

From Middle English culver, from Old English culufre, culfre, culfer, possibly borrowed from Vulgar Latin *columbra, from Latin columbula (“little pigeon”), from Latin columba (“pigeon, dove”).

culver (plural culvers)

1. (now UK, south and east dialect or poetic) A dove or pigeon, now specifically of the species Columba palumbus.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 281:

     Had he ſo doen, he had him ſnatcht away, / More light then Culuer in the Faulcons fiſt.

   • c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665):

     The palsie plagues my pulses
     when I prigg yoͬ: piggs or pullen
     your culuers take, or matchles make
     your Chanticleare or sullen

   • 1885, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, “Uns al-Wujud and the Wazir’s Daughter al-Ward Fi’l-Akmam or Rose-in-Hood. [Night 376.]”, in A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume V, [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC, page 49:

     Then he walked on a little and came to a goodly cage, than which was no goodlier there, and in it a culver of the forest, that is to say, a wood-pigeon, the bird renowned among birds as the minstrel of love-longing, with a collar of jewels about its neck marvellous fine and fair.

• wood pigeon, wood-pigeon, woodpigeon

From culverin, perhaps by confusion with culver (“dove or pigeon”).^[1]

culver (plural culvers)

1. A culverin, a kind of handgun or cannon.
   • 1805, Walter Scott, “Canto Fourth”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, stanza XVII, page 108:

     Falcon and culver on each tower / Stood prompt, their deadly hail to shower; […]

culver

1. alternative form of culvere