# culver
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkʌlvə/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -ʌlvə

### Etymology 1

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”).

#### Noun

culver (plural culvers)
* (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.

##### Synonyms

* wood pigeon, wood-pigeon, woodpigeon

##### Derived terms

* culverhouse
* culverkey
* culvertail
* culvertailed

##### Translations
### Etymology 2

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

#### Noun

culver (plural culvers)
* 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; […]

##### Translations
### References

* ↑ “culver, n.$^2$”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

## Middle English
### Alternative forms

* colvere, colvore, colvre, cullfre, culvere, culvre

### Etymology

From Old English culufre, culfre, culfer, borrowed from Vulgar Latin *columbra, from Latin columbula.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkulvər/

### Noun

culver (plural culveres or culveren)
* A dove (Columba spp.)
** c. 1395, John Wycliffe, John Purvey [et al.], transl., Bible (Wycliffite Bible (later version), MS Lich 10.)‎, published c. 1410, Joon 2:16, page 45r, column 2; republished as Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament, Lichfield: Bill Endres, 2010:And he ſeide to hem þat ſelden culueris / take ȝe awei from hennes þeſe þingis .· ⁊ nyle ȝe make þe hous of my fadir an hows of marchaundiſeAnd he said to those who sold doves: "Take those things out of here; you won't make my father's house a place of business!"
* An affectionate term of familiarity.

#### Synonyms

* douve

#### Descendants

* English: culver

#### References

* “culver, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.