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noun
Ibis  n.  (Zool.) Any bird of the genus Ibis and several allied genera, of the family Ibidae, inhabiting both the Old World and the New. Numerous species are known. They are large, wading birds, having a long, curved beak, and feed largely on reptiles. Note: The sacred ibis of the ancient Egyptians (Ibis aethiopica) has the head and neck black, without feathers. The plumage of the body and wings is white, except the tertiaries, which are lengthened and form a dark purple plume. In ancient times this bird was extensively domesticated in Egypt, but it is now seldom seen so far north. The glossy ibis (Plegadis autumnalis), which is widely distributed both in the Old World and the New, has the head and neck feathered, except between the eyes and bill; the scarlet ibis (Guara rubra) and the white ibis (Guara alba) inhabit the West Indies and South America, and are rarely found in the United States. The wood ibis (Tantalus loculator) of America belongs to the Stork family (Ciconidae). See Wood ibis.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ibis" Quotes from Famous Books



... Ibis ibiso. Ice glacio. Ice, an glaciajxo. Iceberg glacierego, glacimonto. Icicle pendglacio. Icelander Islandano. Idea ideo. Ideal idealo. Identical identa. Identify identigi. Idiocy idioteco. Idiom (a peculiar expression) idiotismo. Idiom (general sense) idiomo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... amounts to nothing much. If you would see the Gods in their glory, fit denizens of Heaven, you must go to Egypt. There you will find that Zeus has sprouted ram's horns, our old friend Hermes has the muzzle of a dog, and Pan is perfect goat; ibis, crocodile, ape,—each is a God ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... ALAR. That's delight, when it may lead To mighty ends. Ah, Florimonde! thou art too pure; Unsoiled in the rough and miry paths Of ibis same trampling world; unskilled in heats Of fierce and emulous spirits. There's a rapture In the strife of factions, that a woman's soul Can never reach. Men smiled on me to-day Would gladly dig my grave; and yet I smiled, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... the trout-fishing in the district. I went out frequently, and had generally very fair sport indeed. Mr Danford, in his paper in 'The Ibis,'[13] in speaking of fishing, says: "Perhaps the best stream in the country is the Sebes, which joins the Strell near Hatszeg. The trout are not bad, one to two lbs. in weight; and the grayling-fishing is really good—almost any number may be taken in autumn, when weather ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... a goat; Cadmus and his sister a white bull; Leda as swan, and Dolida as dragon; And through the lofty object I become, From subject viler still, a god. A horse was Saturn; And in a calf and dolphin Neptune dwelt; Ibis and shepherd Mercury became; Bacchus a grape; Apollo was a crow; And I by help of love, From an inferior thing, do change ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... settler would have few trees to fell and abundant grass for his cattle. As for the game, it came in tracts and districts. Sometimes they thought themselves fortunate could they secure a few pigeons, at others, they revelled in pinguid plenty,—kangaroos roasted whole, fat ibis, flying foxes in scores, and ducks by the dozen. The atmosphere of these latitudes must be particularly favourable to the appetite, judging from the following passage.—"Charley Brown and John, who had been left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque to stand in the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silver moonlight, with the little priest eagerly scratching like an ibis in the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Bramah through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... topic of our after-supper conversation, and then it generalised to the different species of wading birds of America, and at length that singular creature, the "ibis," became the theme. This came round by Besancon remarking that a species of ibis was brought by the Indians to the markets of New Orleans, and sold there under the name of "Spanish Curlew." This was ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... approach. The magnificent fishhawk (Halietus vocifer) sits on the top of a mangrove-tree, digesting his morning meal of fresh fish, and is clearly unwilling to stir until the imminence of the danger compels him at last to spread his great wings for flight. The glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarkable degree, hears from afar the unwonted sound of the paddles, and, springing from the mud where his family has been quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh, and defiant Ha! ha! ha! long before the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... for it is in reality of ancient origin, as we have it on good authority that it was practised by the ancient Egyptians, who, it is believed, acquired their knowledge from observing a bird called the Ibis, a species of Egyptian snipe. The food of this bird, gathered on the banks of the Nile, was of a very constipating character, and it was observed, by the earliest naturalists, to suck up the water of the river and using its long bill for a syringe, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... a log and shaded by a tree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens of them a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs relieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at first they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis and the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were alike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial taste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized -trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor and baited ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... side, water being abundant in every hollow, and since we passed up the river there has been heavy rain in this part of the country, and several of the gullies have been running eight feet deep. Shot a turkey and three black ibis. The Fitzroy Range extends about two miles north of a line from the gorge of the river to Bynoe Range, the Victoria winding round the north end of the range, and some tributary creeks appear to join from ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... hierarchy whose wisdom was the wonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization of Amenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Some superstitious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on the great marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troops of these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slow stalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeral rites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun to their ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... interval of twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon—Yauhu Auhu—followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the world. The moon, also, appeared in many various forms—here, as a man born of Nuit;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it was the left eye of Horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. Like Ra, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the sow. But it was when ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... they do look like," he said. "They look like that bird you see on the Nile, the sacred Ibis, they—" ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... a sound like the creaking of a rusty hinge; there were hawks and buzzards of many different kinds, and red-breasted orioles in the bushes, and black vultures flying overhead, and Muscovy ducks sweeping past with whizzing wings, and flocks of the great wood-ibis sailing in the air on noiseless pinions, and hundreds of other birds that it would require an ornithologist to name; and myriads of insects,—especially ants and spiders, great and small,—that no entomologist ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... bodies of sacred animals in vases of this type. Those found near Ekhmim contain jackals and hawks; those of Sakkarah are devoted to serpents, eggs, and mummified rats; those of Abydos hold the sacred ibis. These last are by far the finest. On the body of the vase, the protecting goddess Khuit is depicted with outspread wings, while Horus and Thoth are seen presenting the bandage and the unguent vase; the whole subject being painted in blue ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... sound. Thus, at Abydos, the archaic fortress is now called the Shunet es Zebib, which in Arabic would have the inexplicable meaning "the store-house of raisins"; but in the old Egyptian language its name, of similar sound, meant "the fortress of the Ibis-jars," several of these sacred birds having been buried there in jars, after the place had been disused as a military stronghold. A large number of Egyptian towns still bear their hieroglyphical names: Aswan, (Kom) Ombo, Edfu, Esneh, Keft, Kus, Keneh, Dendereh, for example. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... expected from the peppery gentleman from Mississippi. He must speak "the language of just indignation." He gladly testified to the consideration with which Douglas was wont to treat the South, but he warned the young Senator from Illinois that the old adage—"in medio tutissimus ibis"—might lead him astray. He might think to reach the goal of his ambitions by keeping clear of the two leading factions and by identifying himself with the masses, but ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Diodorus Siculus, their "lives and safeties" were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. "He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal," says this writer, "is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it, treating him with every cruelty, and sometimes without waiting for judgment to be passed. This treatment inspires such terror, that, if any person happen to find one of these animals ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... in for mere scholastic recitations which nobody understands, and the boys hate. Others burst out in full-blown theatricals. King's College acts on the motto, Medio tutissimus ibis. It keeps the old scholastic recitations, but gilds the pill by adding the accessory of costume. I can quote Latin as well as Dr. Pangloss, and certain lines were running in my mind all the time I was in ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... lighter-coloured leaves of the enormous calabash. The depressions were filled with jungle of more or less density, while here and there opened glades, shadowed even during noon by thin groves of towering trees. At our approach fled in terror flocks of green pigeons, jays, ibis, turtledoves, golden pheasants, quails and moorhens, with crows and hawks, while now and then a solitary pelican winged its way to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... their pouched throats and scythe-like bills, stood in melancholy attitudes, and beside them were the white and scarlet ibis, and the purple gallinule. Roseate spoonbills waded through the shallows, striking their odd-shaped beaks at the crabs and cray-fish; and upon projecting limbs of trees perched the black darter, his long snake-like neck ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... if they were not quite so venerable as the Iliad, possessed at any rate an age sufficiently respectable to pass as classics with schoolmasters. The love-poems of Euphorion, the "Causes" of Callimachus and his "Ibis," the comically obscure "Alexandra" of Lycophron contained in rich abundance rare vocables (-glossae-) suitable for being extracted and interpreted, sentences laboriously involved and difficult of analysis, prolix ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... quiet waters of Lake Menzala, fringed with tall reeds and eucalyptus trees, stretches to the far horizon, where quaintly shaped fishing-boats disappear with their cargoes towards distant Damietta. Thousands of wild birds, duck of all kinds, ibis and pelican, fish in the shallows, or with the sea-gulls wheel in dense masses in the air, for this is a reservation as a breeding-green for wild-fowl, where they are seldom, if ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... the invention of the alphabet is by some ascribed to Syphoas, nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, but more commonly to Athotes, Thoth, or Toth, a deity always figured with the head of the ibis, and very familiar in Egyptian antiquities. Cadmus is accredited with having introduced it from Egypt into Greece ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... doubtless they will. Many during the war of the Boxers were "gathered" unto Him, emulating the zeal and courage and faith of the martyrs of the early days of the Church. As the hen is sacred in the eyes of the Chinaman, sacred as the peacock to Juno or the ibis to the Egyptians, they swear by her head, and an oath thus taken may not ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... description of the nests of all these water-birds is given in the August calendar. It is, however, necessary to state that the eggs of the following birds are likely to be found in July: purple coot, common coot, bronze-winged and pheasant-tailed jacana, black ibis, white-necked stork, cormorant, snake-bird, cotton teal, comb duck, spot-billed duck, spoonbill, and the various ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... green, shading into brilliant violet, and the feet and beak of a bright red. The Licli (Charadrius resplendens, Tsch.) is a plover, whose plumage in color is like that of the huachua, but with a sort of metallic brightness. There are two species of ibis which belong to the Puna, though they are occasionally seen in some of the lower valleys. One is the Bandurria (Theristocus melanopis, Wagl.), and the other is the Yanahuico (Ibis Ordi, Bonap.). On the lagunas swim large flocks of Quiullas (Larus serranus, Tsch.), white ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... worshipped, as Diodorus Siculus records, sun and moon under the name of Isis and Osiris, and after, such men as were beneficial to them, or any creature that did them good. In the city of Bubasti they adored a cat, saith Herodotus. Ibis and storks, an ox: (saith Pliny) [6502]leeks and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... naturalist, Mr. Waterton, says that "if this useful bird caught his food by day instead of hunting it by night, mankind would have ocular demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice, and it would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what the ibis was with the Egyptians." The ibis is a bird that was found so useful in destroying locusts and serpents in Egypt, that in olden times it was made a capital crime for any one to destroy it. Nay, the idolatrous Egyptians went further, and not only paid divine honours to this bird, ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... worship from utilitarian considerations, but from an instinct of reverence. It is possible, indeed, that such a reverential instinct may have been awakened towards certain animals, by seeing their vast importance arising from their special instincts and faculties. The cow and the ox, the dog, the ibis, and the cat, may thus have appeared to the Egyptians, from their indispensable utility, to be endowed with supernatural gifts. But this feeling itself must have had its root in a yet deeper tendency of the Egyptian ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... through the nether world and its introduction into the Judgment Hall, where Osiris, the god of benevolence, sits on a throne, and with the assistance of forty-two assessors proceeds to examine the deceased. His actions are weighed in a balance against truth in the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, and if found wanting he is hounded out in the shape of an unclean animal by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the infernal regions. The soul then proceeds in a series of transmigrations ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... were brushed back behind his protruding ears, and were puffed up by the high collar of his coat. His perfectly bald skull, shining like a bone, overhung a prodigiously long nose, spongy and bulbous at the end, so that with the blue discs of his glasses he looked somewhat like an ibis,—a resemblance increased by his head sunk between his shoulders. This appearance was of course entirely suitable and most providential for one engaged in deciphering hieroglyphic inscriptions and scrolls. He ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... ibis-headed, generally depicted with the pen and palette of a scribe. Was the god of the moon, and of letters. Local ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... the Egyptian ibis-headed god—the one with the beak. Well, no sooner did Tweel hear the name Thoth than he set up a clamor of twittering and squeaking. He pointed at himself and said 'Thoth! Thoth!' and then waved his arm all around and repeated it. Of course he ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... a much more elastic and agreeable motion than the best made springs, and, for a well fed, lazy Princess nothing could have been more charming than to be borne thus beneath the waving palm-trees, and by the banks of the streams where the lotus blossomed at the water's edge, and the Ibis sniffed ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... entered a Chinese temple, the altar-piece, if I may use the term, was the Ganesa of the Hindoos, but not seated on the lotus leaf, but on the Chinese rat. On each side of this were two little candelabras, formed of the Egyptian ibis, holding the oil cups in its beak. I also found the Hounyman, or monkey god of the Hindoos, and Budhist figures. I once observed some sepoys playing and laughing at a bronze image they had picked up at the pagoda of Syriam, and on examining it, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... If you had not took physic, I'd pay off your bacon, But now I'll write short, for fear you're short-taken. Besides, Dick[1] forbid me, and call'd me a fool; For he says, short as 'tis, it will give you a stool. In libris bellis, tu parum parcis ocellis; Dum nimium scribis, vel talpa caecior ibis, Aut ad vina redis, nam sic tua lumina laedis: Sed tibi coenanti sunt collyria tanti? Nunquid eges visu, dum comples omnia risu? Heu Sheridan caecus, heu eris nunc cercopithecus. Nunc bene nasutus mittet tibi carmina tutus: Nunc ope Burgundi, malus ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... are very rare and are admitted to the list of North American species because of the fact that during the years a few stragglers from other parts of the world have been found on our continent. Thus the Scarlet Ibis from South America, and the Kestrel and Rook from western Europe, are known to come to our shores only as rare wanderers who had lost their way, or were blown hither by storms. Eighty-five species of the birds now listed for North America are of this extra-limital ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... wings, were very plentiful. Then among the bushes there were flocks of the red-breasted oriole. The common black vulture is generally to be seen sailing overhead, the great Muscovy ducks fly past with a rushing sound, offering a striking contrast to the great wood-ibis, which sails along with noiseless wings in flocks of ten ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... those arts of imitation which man has derived from the practice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes the use of clysters to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The French are more like Ibises than we are: ils se donnent des lavements eux-memes. But as it is rather uncertain what the Egyptian Ibis is; whether, as translated in Leviticus ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli



Words linked to "Ibis" :   wading bird, sacred ibis, Ibis ibis, wood ibis, Bubulcus ibis, wood stork, family Threskiornithidae, family Ibidiidae, genus Ibis, Threskiornithidae



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