Word.ws English Dictionary

stock dove

stock dove noun: a pigeon of species Columba oenas, found in much of Europe, in the family Columbidae.

stock dove: a pigeon of species Columba oenas, found in much of Europe, in the family Columbidae
Image: WouterVer21, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stock dove (plural stock doves)

  1. A pigeon of species Columba oenas, found in much of Europe, in the family Columbidae.
    • [T]he stock-dove, unalarm'd, / Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends / His long love-ditty for my near approach.1785, William Cowper, The Task, Book VI
    Synonyms:
    stock pigeon

Synonyms of stock dove

Forms of stock dove

pluralstock doves
alternative formstock-dove
alternative formstockdove

Origin of stock dove

From stock (“tree trunk”) + dove, in reference to the bird's habit of nesting in hollow trees.

Questions about stock dove

What does stock dove mean?
Stock dove means a pigeon of species Columba oenas, found in much of Europe, in the family Columbidae.
What part of speech is stock dove?
Stock dove is a noun.
What is the plural of stock dove?
The plural of stock dove is stock doves.

Words near stock dove in the dictionary

  1. stock companies
  2. stock company
  3. stock control
  4. stock cube
  5. stock cubes
  6. stock dove
  7. stock doves
  8. stock down
  9. stock exchange
  10. stock exchanges
  11. stock footage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stock dove (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stock dove.wav.

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