Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of peacock.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It was like a picture of one of these bolshy great birds called peacocks with all its tail spread out in all colours in a very boastful way.

    Where's the show? John Myles Aavedal 2010

  • There were also, instead of wild turkeys, great quantities of wild peacocks—at least they have been identified as peacocks or similar big, pheasant-like birds.

    VIII. Primeval Man; and the Horse, the Lion, and the Elephant 1916

  • These birds are called peacocks, and that is 'the beautiful.'

    Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen 1840

  • He did not say how the women, birds and other banned objects got into the prison, referring to the peacocks as "pets".

    The Guardian World News 2011

  • Is it only me that thinks "peacocks" when looking at this?

    Dan Brown's Campidoglio 2007

  • “I remember being at broker events and I’m watching all the young — what I used to call peacocks — these guys with their feathers flying, bragging about what they were doing,” recalled Mr. Weiss.

    The Peacock Slayer 2009

  • “I remember being at broker events and I’m watching all the young — what I used to call peacocks — these guys with their feathers flying, bragging about what they were doing,” recalled Mr. Weiss.

    The Peacock Slayer 2009

  • Bank Holiday flavour of the streets was added to by a number of lads and girls who had appeared from nowhere, with all sorts of valueless commodities for sale, such as peacocks 'feathers, paper fans, and streamers of coloured paper.

    The Message 1912

  • In the same verse the word "peacocks" of the Authorized Version is the rendering of the Hebrew pl. renanim, properly meaning

    Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897

  • Among the natural products which Solomon's fleet brought home to Jerusalem, mention is made of "peacocks,"

    Smith's Bible Dictionary 1884

Comments

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  • "Peacocks were carefully skinned, their meat seasoned with cumin before being roasted, cooled and stitched back into their feathers, sent to the table apparently alive, their necks supported by wires, their tails spread and a phoenix fire bursting from their gilded beaks. Clearly a health risk, peacocks in their feathers were a triumph of style over substance, since everyone admitted that the flesh was stringy; but that was beside the point. They were centrepieces, designed to delight the eye as much as the palate and to emphasise social power through magnificent display; more than a hundred of them were presented at the installation feast for Archbishop Nevill of York in 1467."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 57

    January 8, 2017