DEER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Deer

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noun

Deer n.

Any animal; especially, a wild animal. (Obs.) "Mice and rats, and such small deer." "The camel, that great deer."

(Zool.) A ruminant of the genus Cervus, of many species, and of related genera of the family Cervidae. The males, and in some species the females, have solid antlers, often much branched, which are shed annually. Their flesh, for which they are hunted, is called venison. Note: The deer hunted in England is Cervus elaphus, called also stag or red deer; the fallow deer is Cervus dama; the common American deer is Cervus Virginianus; the blacktailed deer of Western North America is Cervus Columbianus; and the mule deer of the same region is Cervus macrotis. See Axis, Fallow deer, Mule deer, Reindeer. Note: Deer is much used adjectively, or as the first part of a compound; as, deerkiller, deerslayer, deerslaying, deer hunting, deer stealing, deerlike, etc.

Deer mouse (Zool.), the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus, formerly Hesperomys leucopus) of America.

Small deer, petty game, not worth pursuing; used metaphorically. (See citation from Shakespeare under the first definition, above.) "Minor critics... can find leisure for the chase of such small deer."

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Etymology of 'Deer'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Deer" Quotes from Famous Books

... and crowned with ostrich feathers. They left the back door of the White House amid a shower of rice and old slippers, and were driven to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, where they took a special train for Deer Park. ...

— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... served as sustenance for it. If his presumption was right, he had been outraged in the most sensitive part of him. The mere suspicion filled him with fury, he broke out with the roar of a tiger who has been the sport of a deer, the cry of a tiger which united a brute's strength with the intelligence ...

— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... from Mexico; and this fertile region (which the knowing eye of a Yankee would instantly discover to be full of capabilities in the way of machinery), belongs to no one, and lies here deserted, in solitary beauty. Some poor Indians live amongst the ruins of the old cloisters, and the wild deer possess the undisputed sovereignty of ...

— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... and slept at night, shooting game as they needed it. Several times they narrowly escaped getting mixed up in the native conflicts. Tom had one striking evidence of his giant servant's usefulness. One day he was stalking a small beast, like a deer, when, from a tree overhead, a jaguar sprang down at him. But Koku—I beg his pardon—August was at hand, and, like Sampson of old, the giant slew the beast bare-handed, choking ...

— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... is there!" and with the speed of the hunted deer, he rushed toward the spot, bounding in desperate haste over the dying and ...

— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

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