carrier pigeon

plural carrier pigeons · alternative carrier-pigeon

1. A domestic pigeon which transports attached messages or very small parcels from the place where it is released to a familiar destination.

   Once on her window-sill Harmony found among the pigeons a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg.

   1914, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter 25, in The Street of Seven Stars

   4 more examples

   At length, after wheeling his toothpick slowly round and round in the air, as if it were a carrier pigeon just thrown up, he suddenly made a dart at the drawing,

   1843, Charles Dickens, chapter 21, in Martin Chuzzlewit

   From the fishing basket on which he was sitting came the unusual sound of a ‘coo-coo,’ and another spy was caught. The supposed fisherman had been sending the enemy information by means of the carrier pigeons.

   1914 December 11, The Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, NSW, page 35, column 4

   Two days after the first U.S. bridgehead had been thrown back at Rapido (see p. 23), a U.S. carrier pigeon winged wearily into its home base in Italy. Clipped to its leg was this German sneer: "Herewith your message pigeon is returned. We have plenty to eat."

   1944 February 7, “World Battlefronts: Men at War—The Bird”, in Time

   For the second time in four months, prison guards foiled an attempt to smuggle a cellphone into a prison by carrier pigeon.

   2009 July 3, “Brazil: A Cellphone Carrier Is Thwarted”, in New York Times, retrieved 05 Dec 2011

   Synonyms: homer, homing pigeon

plural Carrier Pigeons

1. alternativeAlternative form of carrier pigeon.