pariah kite

English

Noun

pariah kite (plural pariah kites)

  1. A subspecies of the black kite (Milvus migrans govinda) which acts as a scavenger in India.

Usage notes
  • It has been suggested recently [1] that this term referring to caste prejudice should be replaced with a more neutral name. So far, small Indian kite is just starting to show usage, though the name of the species (black kite) used for the subspecies seems to be more common. Pariah kite is still by far the most widely used, at least in print.

References
  1. Agoramoorthy, G. (2005), “Disallow caste discrimination in biological and social contexts”, in Current Science‎, volume 89, issue 5, page 727

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for pariah kite in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

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