PEACOCK

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does peacock mean? 

• PEACOCK (noun)
  The noun PEACOCK has 2 senses:

1. European butterfly having reddish-brown wings each marked with a purple eyespot

2. male peafowl; having a crested head and very large fanlike tail marked with iridescent eyes or spots

  Familiarity information: PEACOCK used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PEACOCK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

European butterfly having reddish-brown wings each marked with a purple eyespot

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

Inachis io; peacock; peacock butterfly

Hypernyms ("peacock" is a kind of...):

brush-footed butterfly; four-footed butterfly; nymphalid; nymphalid butterfly (medium to large butterflies found worldwide typically having brightly colored wings and much-reduced nonfunctional forelegs carried folded on the breast)

Holonyms ("peacock" is a member of...):

genus Inachis; Inachis (a genus of Nymphalidae)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Male peafowl; having a crested head and very large fanlike tail marked with iridescent eyes or spots

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("peacock" is a kind of...):

bird of Juno; peafowl (very large terrestrial southeast Asian pheasant often raised as an ornamental bird)

 Context examples 

Challenger struts about like a prize peacock, and Summerlee is silent, but still sceptical.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The view is so lovely, and I like to feed the peacocks.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

For the study, the researchers chose Caudipteryx zoui, a dinosaur about the size of a peacock known to have feathered wings but not flight.

(Scientific study suggests dinosaurs flapped their wings as they ran, Wikinews)

From each man's girdle hung sword or axe, according to his humor, and over the right hip there jutted out the leathern quiver with its bristle of goose, pigeon, and peacock feathers.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This will be a regularly merry Christmas to me, with presents in the morning, you and letters in the afternoon, and a party at night, said Amy, as they alighted among the ruins of the old fort, and a flock of splendid peacocks came trooping about them, tamely waiting to be fed.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

To a man of philosophic temperament like myself the blood-tick, with its lancet-like proboscis and its distending stomach, is as beautiful a work of Nature as the peacock or, for that matter, the aurora borealis.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of the peacock's feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences would come of the introduction into those alms-houses of my insignificant person.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Roasted peacocks, with the feathers all carefully replaced, so that the bird lay upon the dish even as it had strutted in life, boars' heads with the tusks gilded and the mouth lined with silver foil, jellies in the shape of the Twelve Apostles, and a great pasty which formed an exact model of the king's new castle at Windsor—these were a few of the strange dishes which faced him.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Don't be a peacock.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)