magpie

noun

• 1a long-tailed crow with boldly marked (or green) plumage and a noisy call.

  • Family Corvidae: five genera and several species, in particular the black-and-white (black-billed) magpie (Pica pica) of Eurasia and North America

• 2 (also bell magpie) any bird of the Australasian butcher-bird family, having black-and-white plumage and musical calls.

  • Family Cracticidae: several species

• 3used figuratively to refer to a person who obsessively collects things or who chatters idly: his father was a garrulous old man who chattered like a magpie [as modifier]: he would carry these documents home to appease his secretive magpie instinct

• 4the division of a circular target next to the outer one, or a shot which strikes this.