canary bird
In slang, 'canary bird' carries two distinct historical meanings: a mistress kept by a wealthy man, and a person who has been imprisoned — a jailbird.
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In slang, 'canary bird' carries two distinct historical meanings: a mistress kept by a wealthy man, and a person who has been imprisoned — a jailbird. The 'mistress' sense may draw on the idea of a caged songbird kept for pleasure, while the 'jailbird' sense parallels the metaphor of being locked up like a caged bird. Both senses are largely archaic and found primarily in 19th and early 20th-century slang dictionaries. In modern use, the term is most associated with a literal canary or the tech concept of a 'canary deployment.'
The old detective novels always described the gangster's canary bird as someone who knew far too much.
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(slang) A jailbird.
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(slang) A mistress.
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(informal) A female singer, soprano, a coloratura singer.
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Any of various small birds of different countries, most of which are largely yellow in colour.
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A British rhyming slang term for a temper tantrum — as in 'throwing a hairy canary'. It has that quintessential rhyming slang energy: the image is absurd, the rhyme is satisfying, and somehow it perfectly captures the frantic, feathery chaos of a proper meltdown. The vulgar sense (slang for penis) also exists but the tantrum usage is the one with more currency in contemporary British English.