Canary

Quick meaning: Canary is a noun meaning A small, usually yellow, finch (genus Serinus), a songbird native to the Canary Islands.

Meaning

A small, usually yellow, finch (genus Serinus), a songbird native to the Canary Islands.

More Meanings

1. Any of various small birds of different countries, most of which are largely yellow in colour.
2. (informal) A female singer, soprano, a coloratura singer.
3. A light, slightly greenish, yellow colour.
4. (Australia, informal) A yellow sticker applied by the police to a vehicle to indicate it is unroadworthy.
5. Any test subject, especially an inadvertent or unwilling one. (From the mining practice of using canaries to detect dangerous gases.)
6. (slang) An informer or snitch; a squealer.
7. (slang) A (usually yellow) capsule of the short-acting barbiturate pentobarbital/pentobarbitone (nembutal).

Example Sentences

Or maybe you'd accept iv a couple o' bottles of claret or canaries?

Ile to my honeſt knight ſir Iohn Falſtaffe, / And drinke Canary with him.

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.

[…] 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, […]

Word Forms

• canaries
• canarying
• canaried

Synonyms for canary

Depending on context, synonyms include informant, chromatic, sneak, fink, stoolie, colored.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include colored, chromatic, fink, sneak, stoolie, birdseed.

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