Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of several large flightless birds of the genus Casuarius of Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent areas, having a large bony projection on the top of the head and brightly colored wattles.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A large struthious bird of the genus Casuarius, subfamily Casuariinæ, and family Casuariidæ, inhabiting Australia and the Papuan islands.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) A large bird, of the genus Casuarius, found in the east Indies. It is smaller and stouter than the ostrich. Its head is armed with a kind of helmet of horny substance, consisting of plates overlapping each other, and it has a group of long sharp spines on each wing which are used as defensive organs. It is a shy bird, and runs with great rapidity. Other species inhabit New Guinea, Australia, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large flightless
bird of the genusCasuarius , native toAustralia andNew Guinea , with a characteristic bony crest on its head, and can be very dangerous.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun large black flightless bird of Australia and New Guinea having a horny head crest
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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When they plant their taro gardens, they call the cassowary “Truly Big Man” and “Truly Important One” instead.
Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010
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“For birders, the cassowary is their holy grail,” Mick tells me as we share tea on the veranda overlooking the garden.
Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010
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There are not any large mammals in Australia and the cassowary is the biggest animal there!
Archive 2008-07-01 WENDEE HOLTCAMP 2008
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There are not any large mammals in Australia and the cassowary is the biggest animal there!
cassowaries and sharks WENDEE HOLTCAMP 2008
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A relative of the ostrich, the cassowary is a large flightless bird that eats fruit and is famous for getting hit by traffic and for producing large, dense scats.
Filmmaker Errol Morris Gets to the Truth Behind the Abu Ghraib Photographs By David Samuels 2008
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Feeling that ordinary language is insufficient to convey his _courteous_ and _chivalrous_ sentiments, he ransacks natural history in search of a sublime metaphor: his triumphant success he records in this beautifully expressed sentence -- "The dilating power of the anaconda and the gizzard of the cassowary are the highest objects of his ambition."
Lands of the Slave and the Free Cuba, the United States, and Canada Henry A. Murray
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The bird seen by the party was a species of cassowary, which is found in
The South Sea Whaler William Henry Giles Kingston 1847
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Told that the cassowary is a bird, a program written in Church might conclude that cassowaries can probably fly.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2010
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Told that the cassowary is a bird, a program written in Church might conclude that cassowaries can probably fly.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2010
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Told that the cassowary is a bird, a program written in Church might conclude that cassowaries can probably fly.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories PhysOrg Team 2010
chained_bear commented on the word cassowary
"'Do you think it really useful to discuss these remote hypotheses? If you were to ask me about the tertian ague or the osteology of the cassowary I could give you a reasonable answer...'"
—Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 358
February 9, 2008
jaime_d commented on the word cassowary
From "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" by Guy Davenport:
"And on a fine English day in the high Victorian year 1868, the year of the first bicycle race and the Trades Union Congress at Manchester, of The Moonstone and The Ring and the Book and of the siege of Magdela, four men gathered at Ashley House in London, a house leafy with Virginia creeper, its interior harmoniously dark and bright, like an English forest, dark with corners and doors and halls, with mahogany and teak and drapes as red as cherries, bright with windows, Indian brass, and lamps like moons, Lord Lindsay pollskepped with the hatchels of a cassowary, Lord Adare whose face looked like a silver teapot, and the galliard Captain Wynne."
January 19, 2010