• 3-minute read
• 29th January 2017

Feathered Friends (5 Phrases in English Inspired by Birds)

To coincide with this weekend’s Big Garden Birdwatch – an annual event organised by the RSPB in which the public helps to survey the UK’s bird population – we thought it might be fun to see how our feathered friends have left their tiny footprints on the English language.

To be specific, we’re going to look at five phrases inspired by birds!

1. As the Crow Flies

In the first of several bird comparisons, saying that something is a certain distance away ‘as the crow flies’ means ‘in a straight line’ or ‘at the shortest distance between two points’.

Although this phrase refers to the fact that birds can travel straight from A to B without worrying about the terrain in between, the choice of a crow is a bit mysterious, since they’re not known for flying in a straight line.

Another term with a similar meaning is ‘beeline’, although this one is arguably a bit more accurate in terms of the flightpath described.

2. A Little Bird Told Me

When someone says that ‘a little bird’ told them something, it doesn’t mean that they’ve actually been speaking to sparrows: rather, they’ve heard a secret and don’t want to say who told them!

No one quite knows where this phrase came from, but one possible origin is a line in the Bible that contains the phrase ‘a bird of the air will carry the voice’.

3. Wild Goose Chase

These days, a ‘wild goose chase’ is a fruitless search or quest. This meaning comes from Shakespeare, but an earlier version of the phrase refers to a type of horse race in which most of the riders would chase down the leader in a formation similar to migrating geese.

As a side note, geese also feature in the phrase ‘wouldn’t say boo to a goose’, which is a way of saying that someone is very timid.

4. As Bald as a Coot

Describing someone as being ‘bald as a coot’ suggests they don’t have any hair on their head. But the birds in question aren’t bald, so where does this phrase come from?

It starts to make a bit more sense once we realise that ‘bald’ actually has roots in a Middle English word meaning ‘white patch’, so a coot is ‘bald’ insofar as it has a white patch on its head!

5. As Dead as a Dodo

Poor old dodo. For one thing, you had the misfortune to be wiped out by being eaten into extinction. On top of this, ‘dead as a dodo’ has become a light-hearted way of saying that something is obsolete or unavailable.

And to add insult to extinction-level injury, your name comes from the Portuguese word doudo, meaning ‘fool’ or ‘simpleton’. If you were still here, dodo, we’d want to give you a hug.