culver

From Middle English culver, from Old English culufre, culfre, culfer, borrowed from Vulgar Latin *columbra, from Latin (diminutive) columbula (“little pigeon”), from Latin columba (“pigeon, dove”).

culver (plural culvers)

1. (Britain, dialectal, poetic) A dove or pigeon.
2. (now Britain, south and east dialectal) A dove, now specifically of the species Columba palumbus.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.vii:

     Had he so doen, he had him snatcht away, / More light then Culuer in the Faulcons fist.

   • 1885, The book of the thousand nights and a night Vol. 5, Richard Burton:

     a culver of the forest, that is to say, a wood-pigeon.

• wood pigeon

From culverin.

culver (plural culvers)

1. A culverin, a kind of handgun or cannon.
   • Sir Walter Scott

     Falcon and culver on each tower / Stood prompt their deadly hail to shower.