covey

American  

[kuhv-ee] / ˈkʌv i /

noun

• coveys
  plural

1. a brood or small flock of partridges or similar birds.

2. a group, set, or company.

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covey British  

/ ˈkʌvɪ /

noun

1. a small flock of grouse or partridge

2. a small group, as of people

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• coveys
  plural

Etymology

Origin of covey

First recorded in 1400–50; Middle English, variant of covee, from Anglo-French, Old French, noun use of feminine of past participle of cover “to hatch,” from Latin cubāre “to lie down”; cf. couvade, concubine

Explanation

A covey is a social group of birds. You can also use it for a group of people, like the covey of kids that hangs out on the playground after school. The roots of covey go back to the Latin cubare, "incubate or hatch." The word was originally used for a brood of newly-hatched partridges or other similar birds. Today it can refer to one family group, like a mother pigeon and her chicks, or a flock that hangs out together. Feel free to describe other groups using this word, like the covey of tourists walking slowly down the sidewalk with their map as the locals dodge past them.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

covey coveys

Goodbye as well to a covey of quarterbacks, several of whom didn’t impress despite getting ample opportunities with most starters sitting out the entire preseason.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2025

Working within this mystical production concept, Ms. Kampe digs below the surface to covey what drives Senta.

From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2020

From businesses, governments and organisations, a scripted response will fail to resonate as it will not covey empathy and compassion.

From BBC ● Jan. 18, 2018

Out flew Secret Service agents and a covey of aides, all unavoidably inflated with the adrenaline-rush self-importance of big-time campaigning, and then from behind the tinted glass came Hillary Clinton.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 17, 2016

A moment later, she saw movement in the bushes, but it was only a small covey of bobwhites startled from their roost.

From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez

The book resonates with a rustic knowingness that coveys the intricacies and suspicions of tightly bound lives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2024

Hudson Reese, 84, who owns 1,000 acres in Halifax County, said as a teen, he could regularly find eight coveys of quail on his farm, and now that’s down to one or two.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 7, 2023

A Park Service employee, for example, does not have the right to tweet or blog things related to their official duties in a manner that coveys official status.

From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2017

French has no word that combines the sense of “broken” and “mad” that cracked coveys in English, so De Freyman makes it “cinglé”, which comes back from Schwartz as “crazy”.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 4, 2016

For a week our host had noted where the coveys were gathering.

From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck