ṭāwūs
طاووس: (ṭāwūs): n.: peacock
That the peacock would lend his name to “a goodly, or beautiful man” is not at all surprising.[1] Allowing even for the fatuous equation of physical attractiveness and moral virtue, the usage has proved durable and is as natural in Arabic as in English. Even today there is only a narrow gap separating “a handsome bird” from a handsome man or, perhaps, one who indulges too much in the ostentatious foppery eschewed by the most famous of peacocks, Beau Brummell.
Beau Brummell c. 1805, via Wikimedia Commons
All digression aside, the great storehouse of classic Arabic rhetoric provides for the peacock a great many uses more.
Ṭāwūs has referred to the bird as well as the crescent moon (هلال hilāl), and it has served as shorthand for “the last nights of the month,” as reckoned by the changing lunar phase.[2] Again, the link to comeliness is not far off: the moon has always served as the poet’s first port of call in describing the beauty of his beloved.
At least one dialectical usage was further afield, and all the more lovely for it.
The dictionary writer Ibn Manzur noted that in Yemen the garish and flagrantly plumed male peafowl lent his name to “verdant land, wherein … is every kind of plant, or of flowers, in the days of spring.”
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(It’s worth noting Webster’s 1913 posits “Oriental origin” for the English “peacock,” but OED places it in the Germanic camp.)
Shah Alam II, seated on the Peacock Throne via Wikimedia Commons
