carrier pigeon

1. 1.

   a homing pigeon used to carry messages

   Broaderhoming pigeon

Questions about carrier pigeon

What does carrier pigeon mean?

carrier pigeon means "a homing pigeon used to carry messages".

Is carrier pigeon a common word?

carrier pigeon is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.