What does corbie mean?
Corbie is a dialectal word, used mainly in Scotland and northern England, meaning a crow or raven — most specifically the carrion crow, the all-black scavenging bird familiar across the British countryside. Though rarely heard in standard American or southern British speech, it survives vigorously in Scottish literature, folksong, and proverb, most famously in the traditional ballad 'Twa Corbies,' in which two ravens converse over a slain knight. The word derives from Old French corbeau, itself from Latin corvus, making it a cousin of architectural terms like corbel and the seabird name cormorant. It appears in fixed expressions such as 'corbie step' or 'corbie gable', describing the stepped gables of traditional Scottish buildings, and in similes such as 'as black as a corbie'. For readers of Burns, Scott, or Border ballads, corbie is an essential piece of vocabulary, lending any sentence that uses it a richly regional, evocative character.
nounA raven or crow, especially the carrion crow; a chiefly Scottish and Northern English dialectal term for these large black corvid birds.
- A crow, especially the carrion crow (chiefly Scottish and Northern English dialect).
- A raven.
"An old corbie perched on the drystone wall, watching the lambs in the field below."
"The corbies wheeled over the stubble fields at dusk, their calls carrying across the glen."
"In the old ballad 'Twa Corbies,' two ravens discuss where they will feast on a fallen knight."
Regular plural formation; the plural appears naturally in dialect speech and in titles such as the ballad 'Twa Corbies'.
"Corbies gathered on the fence posts as the plough turned the cold earth."
'As the corbie flies' is the Scottish answer to 'as the crow flies' — same bird, different border.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of corbie
Corbie entered Middle English from Old French corbeau, meaning 'raven', which descends from the Latin corvus, 'crow' or 'raven'. The word took firmest root in Scots and Northern English dialects, where it remains the ordinary folk name for the carrion crow. Its Latin ancestry makes it a relative of other English borrowings from the same root, including corbel, the wall bracket named for its beak-like shape, and cormorant, literally 'sea-raven'.
How corbie is actually used
The word belongs chiefly to Scots and Northern English dialect and carries a distinctly regional, often literary or rustic flavour. It appears frequently in Scottish poetry, ballads, and traditional sayings rather than in everyday standard English.
Easily confused with corbie
A corbel is a structural bracket projecting from a wall to support a weight, whereas a corbie is a bird (a crow or raven); both words share the same Latin root corvus but have entirely different meanings.