Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A large Australian crane (Grus rubicunda) with a bare greenish head and a red stripe around the neck. It is known for its elaborate courtship dance.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An Australian
crane
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Later we went out to a local bilabong to watch the birds -- I'd said I'd never seen a brolga.
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The aboriginal legend is that a brolga had been promised in marriage by her parents to a pelican.
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I could still feel a knot of scar tissue, a souvenir of the brolga attack years earlier.
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He had a brolga as a friend, a large bird that he called Brolly.
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I could still feel a knot of scar tissue, a souvenir of the brolga attack years earlier.
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He had a brolga as a friend, a large bird that he called Brolly.
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In 1996 Archibald and Matthiessen traveled to the Gulf of Carpentaria to observe Australia's only two crane species, the sarus and the brolga, or "native companion," so called because of its close association with Australia's Aboriginal people.
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The synergy between the brolga and Aborigines is intriguing, and has evolved over some 45,000 years.
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The brolga has a taste for dancing; flocks of this bird may be seen solemnly going through quadrilles and lancers -- of their own invention -- on the plains.
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The brolga, or native companion, is a handsome Australian bird of the crane family.
reesetee commented on the word brolga
A large Australian crane.
December 5, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word brolga
"The Americans, however, saved his arse.... Although everyone remembers them for nylons and candy bars, they also paid big money for rosellas and lorikeets, blue bonnets and golden whistlers, all varieties of cockatoos, king parrots and western parrots, finches, warblers, even a pair of dancing brolgas courtesy of Harry the rabbitoh."
—Peter Carey, Illywhacker, 481
April 18, 2009