canary
Pluralcanaries
Verbcanaries, canarying, canaried
Pluralcanaries
Formscanaries, canarying, canaried
- 1A small songbird, usually yellow, that first came from the Canary Islands.
My grandmother kept a canary in a cage by the kitchen window.
The canary sang every morning when the sun came up.
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- 2Someone or something used to try out a thing first, often without choosing to be.
We were the canaries for the new school app, and nobody asked us first.
The first family to move into the new building became a canary for its problems.
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- 3
- 4A light yellow color with a little bit of green in it.
Canary is my favorite color for summer dresses.
The walls were a soft canary that made the small room feel bright.
- 5Having a light yellow color.
She wore a canary dress to the party.
Our kitchen has canary walls and white cupboards.
- 6
- 7Any of several small birds from different countries, most of them mostly yellow.
A wild canary was pecking at the seeds in our backyard feeder.
Flocks of little yellow canaries fed in the grass by the river.
- 8A change tried first on a few computers or users before everyone gets it.
We sent the update out as a canary to a small group of players.
The canary crashed on two servers, so the team stopped the update.
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- 9To try out a new software change on a few computers or users before giving it to everyone.
We'll canary the fix on one server tonight.
The team canaried the new login page for a week before everyone got it.
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- 10A test value a program puts in memory so it can notice when data spills over and fix the problem.
Like a thin thread across a doorway: if it is broken, you know someone went through.
Before the function ends, the program checks that the canary has not changed.
If too much data is written into the box, the canary is the first thing to get overwritten.
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- 11
- 12A light, sweet white wine made on the Canary Islands.
The innkeeper poured each guest a small glass of canary.
Sailors brought barrels of canary home from the islands.
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- 13A capsule, usually yellow, of a strong sleeping drug called pentobarbital.
The police found a bottle of canaries hidden in his car.
The detective knew the yellow pill at once. It was a canary.
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- 14A yellow sticker police put on a car to show it is not safe to drive.
The cops put a canary on my ute because the tyres were bald.
He has a week to fix the brakes and get the canary taken off.
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- 15A fast, lively dance that may have come from Spain.
The musicians started a canary, and the couples hurried onto the floor.
She learned to dance the canary for a Renaissance festival.
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- 16To dance with quick, light steps, as in an old dance called the canary.
but to jig off a tune at / the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet,
c. 1595, William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”Here, canary means dance with quick, light steps.Note
- 17A used ticket that a driver or ticket seller keeps and sells again to a new passenger, cheating the transport company.
The bus driver was fired for selling canaries and keeping the fares for himself.
The ticket I bought from the driver was a canary that someone else had already used.
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- 18A British coin called a sovereign.
He paid for the horse with ten canaries from his purse.
She kept one canary sewn into her coat in case of trouble.
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Practice
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Origin
Named after the Canary Islands, whose name comes from the Latin word for "dog".