pigeon [LME] The name of the pigeon comes from French pijon, a word for a young bird, especially a young dove. It is an alteration of Latin pipio, which imitates the piping or cheeping of a nestling. The phrase to be someone’s pigeon, ‘to be someone’s concern or responsibility’, has nothing to do with homing pigeons going astray, or indeed anything involving the bird: pigeon here is a respelling of pidgin and thus means ‘business’. The pigeon’s distinctive walk gave us pigeon-toed [L18th], meaning ‘having the toes or feet turned inwards’, and pigeon-chested or pigeon-breasted, ‘having a protruding chest’, from the early 19th century.