Word.ws English Dictionary

pelecan

pelecan is the archaic form of pelican.

Meaning of pelican

Noun

pelican (plural pelicans)

  1. Any of various seabirds of the family Pelecanidae, having a long bill with a distendable pouch.
    • The old have outlived that mental world we so misname in calling it a world of enjoyment;—they have outlived the feverish dreams which waste those keen hopes—the pelicans of the heart, feeding on the life-blood of their parent;—they have now no part in the excitement of success, whether in its...1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter III, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 54
  2. A native or resident of the American state of Louisiana.
  3. (obsolete) A retort or still having a curved tube or tubes leading back from the head to the body for continuous condensation and redistillation.
  4. A set of forceps used to force overcrowded teeth apart.
    Synonyms:
    dental pelican
  5. (Canada, slang) A waterbomber.
  6. (slang) An ageing prostitute.

See all 13 meanings of pelican

Forms of pelecan

pluralpelecans

Questions about pelecan

What is pelecan the archaic form of?
Pelecan is the archaic form of pelican.

Words near pelecan in the dictionary

  1. Pele's tears
  2. Pele-type
  3. pelea
  4. Pelean
  5. peleas
  6. pelecan
  7. pelecanid
  8. pelecanids
  9. pelecaniform
  10. pelecaniforms
  11. pelecanoidid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pelecan (page history and authors); pelican (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pelecan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pelecan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.