gallows bird

noun

Informal.

1. a person who deserves to be hanged.

gallows bird

noun

1. informal,  a person considered deserving of hanging

Word History and Origins

Origin of gallows bird¹

First recorded in 1775–85

Example Sentences

‘And take Merchant Lyte. Everybody along Long Wharf knows you called him a gallows bird. He’s not used to it.’

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‘Away with you, you gallows birds,’ they were saying.

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He who helped the bishop but," he added, with a rather sinister roll of the eye, "was surely none other than that gallows bird, Morten the cook.

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And it really did not require this certificate to convince most of his visitors, that, like many of the trading consuls of the Levant, he was somewhat of a gallows bird.

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“And I hear you been saying I was a gallows bird?”

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