Peacocking is well established as meaning strutting, posing, dressing up posh, etc. Looks like the best one can say for raven (v) is that it’s a homograph of the noun.
... is not a verb! You can cock something up, or cock something over, but unless I'm really not down with the kids any more you can't just cock something.
Well it's not the kind of thing *I'd* do, anyway. ;)
Or one could troll taxonomists by suggesting "bat"?
Quite the contrary! I read a humorous rethinking of taxonomy once (faint traces in my long-term memory think it might have been this but it's remarkably hard to google up anything detailed enough to confirm or deny) which subdivided the obvious category of flying animals into the subcategories "Things Which Fly Straight" (birds) and "Things Which Refuse To Fly Straight" (insects), and on that basis decreed "Bats are flying insects and I will not budge from this position."
From the Biblical perspective, the bat is indeed a bird.
(This does not mean the ancient Israelites were wrong, just that they were using a different definition of "bird" from us. See further the narrator's take on whether a whale is a fish in Moby-Dick.)
Mmm. But whereas various English words like "nice" and "naughty" have drifted considerably in meaning over the centuries, in this case it might simply be that "צִפּוֹר" doesn't translate exactly as "bird"?
Though I admit I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that "bird" had also included bats at some point in the history of the English language…
The OED says that in English bats "were formerly classed as birds" and gives the quotation from 1340, "Bringen her a nihte-bird . a bakke . or an oule."
In Old English a bat was a hreaðemūs — "The first element may represent the stem of Old English hrēran to move, to shake, to agitate". Later this became rearmouse or reremouse, which survived in some rural dialects and in heraldry.
The word bakke comes from a Scandinavian language (perhaps Danish) and first appears in the 14th century; this became bat by the late 16th century.
It occurs to me that birds aren't the only sources of verbs; you can dog someone (or hound them), fawn over them, snake around obstacles or weasel out of them, pig out (and hog all the food), horse around, badger someone, ape them or fox them, leech from them, ram them, wolf something down, rabbit on, or apparently if you're American, skunk someone - presumably at Beetle.
You can also act the goat, be sheepish or make sheep's eyes, be catty or mousy (or crabby), be bullish or a cow, smell something fishy, and whale on someone, although heavens knows where that one came from.
(Though "to bunt" as a verb isn't actually related to "bunting", the nation-wide patriotic superfluity of flags. And it's not clear if you're permitting the bird's name to be a participle.)
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Looks like the best one can say for raven (v) is that it’s a homograph of the noun.
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Well it's not the kind of thing *I'd* do, anyway. ;)
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Loon. Gander.
And maybe you coot in order to give someone cooties?
Or one could troll taxonomists by suggesting "bat"?
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Quite the contrary! I read a humorous rethinking of taxonomy once (faint traces in my long-term memory think it might have been this but it's remarkably hard to google up anything detailed enough to confirm or deny) which subdivided the obvious category of flying animals into the subcategories "Things Which Fly Straight" (birds) and "Things Which Refuse To Fly Straight" (insects), and on that basis decreed "Bats are flying insects and I will not budge from this position."
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(This does not mean the ancient Israelites were wrong, just that they were using a different definition of "bird" from us. See further the narrator's take on whether a whale is a fish in Moby-Dick.)
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Though I admit I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that "bird" had also included bats at some point in the history of the English language…
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In Old English a bat was a hreaðemūs — "The first element may represent the stem of Old English hrēran to move, to shake, to agitate". Later this became rearmouse or reremouse, which survived in some rural dialects and in heraldry.
The word bakke comes from a Scandinavian language (perhaps Danish) and first appears in the 14th century; this became bat by the late 16th century.
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You can also act the goat, be sheepish or make sheep's eyes, be catty or mousy (or crabby), be bullish or a cow, smell something fishy, and whale on someone, although heavens knows where that one came from.
Parrot is a bird verb we've not yet had.
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(Though "to bunt" as a verb isn't actually related to "bunting", the nation-wide patriotic superfluity of flags. And it's not clear if you're permitting the bird's name to be a participle.)