lowbell

English

Etymology

From low +‎ bell. See low (“a flame”).

Noun

lowbell (plural lowbells)

  1. A bell used in fowling at night, to frighten birds, and, with a sudden light, to make them fly into a net.
    • c. 1700-1708, William King, Art of Love
      The fowler's lowbell robs the lark of sleep.
  2. (Can we verify(+) this sense?) A bell to be hung on the neck of a sheep.
    • 1831, Thomas Burgeland Johnson, The Sportsman's Cyclopedia, page 527:
      […] take the lowbell […] ; toll this bell just as a weather sheep does, while he is feeding in pasture ground […]
    • 2009, Newton Key, ‎Robert Bucholz, Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714 (page 113)
      […] pipes and horns were sounded, together with lowbells [cow- or sheep-bell] and other smaller bells which the company had amongst them […]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “lowbell”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

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