bird [OE] The origin of bird is unknown, and there are no parallel forms in any of the languages related to English. Old English brid (with the r before the i) meant only a chick or a nestling: an adult bird was a fowl [OE]. The form brid existed alongside bird in the literary language into the 15th century, but after that it survived only in dialect. Meanwhile fowl stopped being a general term for bird, and it now refers only to specialized groups such as wildfowl [OE] and waterfowl [LME]. The first record of the proverb a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (often in early examples ‘in the wood’) comes in the mid 15th century. In birds of a feather flock together, first recorded a century later, the word ‘a’ means ‘one’ or ‘the same’.

The British slang use of bird to mean a young woman is associated with the 1960s and 1970s, but goes back as far as the Middle Ages. In those days there was another word bird, also spelled burd, that meant a young woman, which people confused with the familiar bird. The Virgin Mary could be described in those days as ‘that blissful bird of grace’. The modern use, recorded from the beginning of the 20th century, appears to be something of a revival. Bird had been used for ‘man, person’ since 1799.

The earliest version of the expression give someone the bird, meaning to boo or jeer at them, is the big bird, which was used by people working in the theatre in the early 19th century. The big bird referred to was a goose, a bird well known for its aggressive hissing when threatened or annoyed. The booing and hissing of the audience at an actor’s poor performance might well have suggested a flock of angry geese.

Bird meaning ‘a prison sentence’ is a shortening of birdlime (see also viscous) used in rhyming slang to mean ‘time’. So if you were ‘doing bird’ or ‘doing birdlime’, you were ‘doing time’, a sense known from the mid 19th century.

In golf a birdie is a score of one stroke under par (see pair) at a hole. Two under par is an *eagle, three under par is an albatross or double eagle, and one over par is a bogey (see bogus). This scoring terminology is said to have originated at the end of the 19th century when an American golfer hit a bird with his drive yet still managed to score one under par at the hole—this bird suggested birdie, and the other bird names were added to continue the theme.