‘My dove’ has been used as an affectionate term of address since the fourteenth century. In Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale we have: ‘Rise up, my wife, my love, my lady free…my dove sweet.’ This shows normal usage to...

Regularly used of a young girl, a sweetheart, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and still occasionally found. Girl with Green Eyes, by Edna O’Brien, has ‘you poor little pigeon’ used as an intimacy. In later slang use a...

Dread the anger of the dove. (French) He who makes himself a dove is eaten by the hawk. (Italian) The dove finds it comfortable everywhere....

Feral Rock Pigeon beside Weiming Lake, Peking University Indian pigeons Bangalore Pigeons and doves constitute the family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerine birds. In general parlance the terms...