canary
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L30361 on Wikidata ↗adjective
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L335145 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /kəˈnɛəɹi/ / /kəˈnɛːɹɪj/ / /kəˈneɹi/
adj
Etymology: From French canarie, from Spanish canario, from the Latin Canariae insulae (“Canary Islands”) (Spanish Islas Canarias); from the largest island Insula Canaria (“Dog Island" or "Canine Island”), named for its dogs, from canārius (“canine”), from canis (“dog”).
- Of a light yellow colour.
noun
Etymology: From French canarie, from Spanish canario, from the Latin Canariae insulae (“Canary Islands”) (Spanish Islas Canarias); from the largest island Insula Canaria (“Dog Island" or "Canine Island”), named for its dogs, from canārius (“canine”), from canis (“dog”).
- A small, usually yellow, finch (genus Serinus), a songbird native to the Canary Islands.
- Any of various small birds of different countries, most of which are largely yellow in colour.
- A female singer, soprano, a coloratura singer.
- An informer or snitch; a squealer.
- A light, slightly greenish, yellow colour.
- A (usually yellow) capsule of the short-acting barbiturate pentobarbital/pentobarbitone (nembutal).
- A yellow sticker applied by the police to a vehicle to indicate it is unroadworthy.
“The tendency in these types of situations (as far as I can see) is that because I don't think the act itself is illegal, the police will go through your vehicle systematically loking^([sic]) for anything wrong with it, to slap a canary on it (that's slang for an unroadworthy sticker) or present you with some other fine.”
“Yes, if the exhaust is to noisey^([sic]) they can slap a yellow canary on it, but the[n] who cares you got rid of it.”
- Any test subject, especially an inadvertent or unwilling one. (From the mining practice of using canaries to detect dangerous gases.)
- A value placed in memory such that it will be the first data corrupted by a buffer overflow, allowing the program to identify and recover from it.
- A change that is tested by being rolled out first to a subset of machines or users before rolling out to all.
- A light, sweet, white wine from the Canary Islands.
“Ile to my honeſt knight ſir Iohn Falſtaffe, / And drinke Canary with him.”
“And though the annals of the period do not show us that there was less ale drawn, or less canary called for; men got dry with the heat of polemical discussion, and drunk with a text, not the fag end of a ballad, in their mouths; and people made a sort of morality of straight hair, long faces, and sad-coloured garments.”
- A lively dance, possibly of Spanish origin (also called canaries).
“In an other corner, Mistris Minx, a marchants wife, that will eate no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twentie shillings a pound, that lookes as simperingly as if she were besmeard, and iets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the canaries, […]”
“[…] I haue ſeen a medicine / That's able to breath life into a ſtone, / Quicken a rocke, and make you dance Canari / With ſprightly fire and motion, […]”
- A sovereign (coin).
- A previously-issued ticket, retained by a ticket-seller, conductor or driver and resold to a subsequent passenger as a means of defrauding the transport company.
“She had previously been sacked ... for "selling canaries" - a practice in which drivers resell used tickets to passengers and keep the fare for themselves.”
- A prisoner or convict.
verb
Etymology: From French canarie, from Spanish canario, from the Latin Canariae insulae (“Canary Islands”) (Spanish Islas Canarias); from the largest island Insula Canaria (“Dog Island" or "Canine Island”), named for its dogs, from canārius (“canine”), from canis (“dog”).
- To dance nimbly (as in the canary dance).
“but to jig off a tune at / the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet,”
- To inform or snitch, to betray secrets, especially about illegal activities.
- To test a software change by rolling out to a small set of machines or users before making it available to all.