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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. (British dialect, poetic) A dove or pigeon.
  2. (now UK, south and east dialect) 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.
  3. A culverin.
    • Sir Walter Scott
      Falcon and culver on each tower / Stood prompt their deadly hail to shower.