What is "falcon"

Falcon \Fal"con\, n. [OE. faucon, faucoun, OF. faucon, falcon, ?. faucon, fr. LL. falco, perh. from L. falx, falcis, a sickle or scythe, and named from its curving talons. Cf. Falchion.]

1. (Zo["o]l.)

   1. One of a family ( Falconid[ae]) of raptorial birds, characterized by a short, hooked beak, strong claws, and powerful flight.

   2. Any species of the genus Falco, distinguished by having a toothlike lobe on the upper mandible; especially, one of this genus trained to the pursuit of other birds, or game.

      In the language of falconry, the female peregrine ( Falco peregrinus) is exclusively called the falcon.
      --Yarrell.

2. (Gun.) An ancient form of cannon.

   Chanting falcon. (Zo["o]l.) See under Chanting.

mid-13c., faucon, from Old French faucon "falcon" (12c.), from Late Latin falconem (nominative falco) "falcon" (source also of Old Spanish falcon, Portuguese falcão, Italian falcone, Old High German falcho, German Falke, Dutch valk), probably from Latin falx (genitive falcis) "curved blade, pruning hook, sickle, war-scythe" (see falcate); the bird said to be so called for the shape of its talons, legs, or beak, but also possibly from the shape of its spread wings.\n

\nThe other theory is that the Latin bird name falx is of Germanic origin and means "gray bird" (from the source of fallow (adj.)), which is supported by the antiquity of the word in Germanic but opposed by those who point out that falconry by all evidences was imported from the East, and the Germans got it from the Romans, not the other way round.

n. 1 Any bird of the genus ''Falco'', all of which are bird of prey. 2 A female such bird, a male being a tiercel. 3 A light cannon used from the 15th to the 17th century; a falconet. vb. To hunt with a falcon or falcons.

n. diurnal birds of prey having long pointed powerful wings adapted for swift flight

v. hunt with falcons; "The Arabs like to falcon in the desert"

Falcón State (, ) is one of the 23 states (estados) that constitute Venezuela. The state capital is Coro.

A falcon is a bird of prey.

Falcon may also refer to:

The Falcon line of computer games is a series of simulations of the F-16 Fighting Falcon combat aircraft. The games were developed and published by Spectrum HoloByte (later MicroProse). They were noted for their high level of realism unseen in contemporary simulation games.

Falcón is a state in Venezuela

Falcón may also refer to:

The Falcon is a Czech 12.7 mm caliber bolt-action sniper rifle developed by Zbrojovka Vsetín Inc. (ZVI). The rifle is intended for ground troops and special forces for operations against distant targets up to , such as armored vehicles (AFV) or technical equipment.

Falcón is a 2012 crime television series based on the books by Robert Wilson, produced by Mammoth Screen for the Sky, Canal+, and ZDF channels.

A falcon is a member of the genus Falco, which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica.

Adult falcons have thin, tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and to change direction rapidly. Fledgling falcons, in their first year of flying, have longer flight feathers, which make their configuration more like that of a general-purpose bird such as a broadwing. This makes it easier to fly while learning the exceptional skills required to be effective hunters as adults.

The falcons are the largest genus in the Falconinae subfamily of Falconidae, which itself also includes another subfamily comprising caracaras and a few other species. All these birds kill with their beaks, using a "tooth" on the side of their beaks — unlike the hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey in Accipitridae, which use their feet.

The largest falcon is the gyrfalcon at up to 65 cm in length. The smallest falcons are the kestrels, of which the Seychelles kestrel measures just 25 cm. As with hawks and owls, falcons exhibit sexual dimorphism, with the females typically larger than the males, thus allowing a wider range of prey species.

Some small falcons with long, narrow wings are called " hobbies", and some which hover while hunting are called " kestrels".

As is the case with many birds of prey, falcons have exceptional powers of vision; the visual acuity of one species has been measured at 2.6 times that of a normal human. Peregrine falcons have been recorded diving at speeds of 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), making them the fastest-moving creatures on Earth.

The Falcon (Sam Wilson) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan, and introduced in Captain America #117 (Sept. 1969), the character is mainstream comics' first African-American superhero. Falcon uses mechanical wings to fly and has limited telepathic and empathic control over birds. Following Steve Rogers' retirement, Sam Wilson becomes the newest Captain America and leader of the Avengers.

The Falcon's deceased nephew was the Incredible Hulk's sometime-sidekick Jim Wilson, one of the first openly HIV-positive comic-book characters. Jim Wilson's father Gideon Wilson would go on to join the Gamma Corps. Gideon would presumably be Sam's older brother. Sam also has a sister named Sarah Casper and a nephew, named Jody Toby Casper and an unnamed niece.

Anthony Mackie portrays Falcon in the 2014 Marvel Studios film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and reprises his role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Ant-Man (2015) and Captain America: Civil War (2016).

Falcon is a tongue-in-cheek term that is used in different forms of football to describe an accidental knock to the head with the ball.

The phrase originated from rugby league in Australia. On The Footy Show, casual presenter Mario Fenech's weekly segment was introduced by a piece of footage from his playing days showing a ball being passed accidentally into his head. Fenech, being of Maltese descent, has the nickname " The Maltese Falcon", and thus the 'Golden Falcon Award' began to be informally awarded to players whose head came into contact with the football in professional matches. This was shortened to just 'Falcon', and its use became more widespread with use common amongst Australia's sporting codes referring to any instance of an object, usually a ball, coming into contact with a person's head.

Falcon was a transactional storage engine being developed for the MySQL relational database management system. Development was stopped after Oracle purchased MySQL. It was based on the Netfrastructure database engine. Falcon was designed to take advantage of Sun's zfs file system.

Architecture analysis showed an interesting mixture of possible performance properties, while low level benchmarks on the first alpha release in 5.1.14-falcon showed that Falcon performed differently from both InnoDB and MyISAM. It did better in several tests, worse in others, with inefficient support for the MySQL LIMIT operation a limitation. Its biggest advantage though is known to be ease of use; Falcon requires minimum maintenance and designed to reconfigure itself automatically to handle all types of loads efficiently.

Falcon is a steel roller coaster at the amusement park Duinrell, located in Wassenaar, Netherlands. The roller coaster is a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter model coaster which was opened to the public on 14 May 2009. At 97 degrees, Falcon has a steeper-than-vertical drop, and the steepest drop of any roller coaster in the Netherlands.

Falcon is a surname. Some possible places of origin are:

• Pompeyo Falcó, a Roman consul
• a Scandinavian prince, who arrived in Spain about 1080
• a prince of Sulcia, called Falcón, who ruled the island of Candia, near Venice, Italy and who married a daughter of King Camirto of Dacia

A possible beginning of the patronymic derivation of Falcon is Saint Falcón, who died in 1147, and is attributed with the popularization of the given name. Another is the Italian surname Falcó and Falcóne, which could easily have become Falcón in Spain.

In the coastal area of Languedoc, Girona and Ibiza there are areas known as Falcó, which may account for the surname in Cataluna, Baleares and Valencia. By 1500, several Languedoc families using the name Faucon came from a Falconi family from Florence, Italy. Among the oldest of Valencia's historical Falcons is Micer Rodrigo Falcon recorded in 1441 as the Chancellery of Aragon. He obtained ownership of the plaza of vice-chancellor in 1460. HIs nephew was the famous doctor of law, Micer Damian Andres Falcon, noted to be "of much eloquent in speech".

In British records, the name was brought into England during the Norman Invasion of 1066. The name Faukonarii is mentioned who worked at Carnarvon Castle in 1282, earning 6d per day in the summer, and 5d in the winter. In 1273, Richard le Faulconer was recorded in Huntingdonshire and William Falconer was documented during the reign of Edward III. In the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379, a Geoffrey Faulconer was listed. In some cases this name may have also been an occupational name for a man who worked the 16th-century piece of artillery named after the bird of prey.

Falcon is an open source, multi-paradigm programming language. Design and implementation is led by Giancarlo Niccolai, a native of Bologna, Italy and Information Technology graduate from Pistoia.

Falcon translates computer source code to virtual machine instructions for evaluation. The virtual machine is intended to be both a stand-alone interpreter as well as for integration in third-party embedding applications.

A core design consideration for the Falcon programming language is to provide acceptably high performing scripting plug-ins to multi threaded data acquisition, reporting and dispersion applications.

As programming languages go, Falcon design leans more towards conciseness of code and expressiveness than general readability. The Falcon implementation does provide facilities for source level documentation and this documentation may become important as the mixed paradigm potential of Falcon scripting attempts to meet the problems faced with programming in the large.

Falcon is the second album from Manchester indie rock band The Courteeners. It was officially available for pre-order on 7 December 2009, however it appeared on recordstore.co.uk on 5 December and was released on 22 February 2010. Since release, the album has garnered mixed reviews from many critics, but several major music publications such as NME and Mojo have given the album highly positive reviews. It reached number 6 in the UK Album chart.

The album has also been noted as a much more polished and ambitious album than their debut, St. Jude. The album has seen the release of three singles, " You Overdid It Doll" was released on 15 February 2010, peaking at number 28 in the UK; " Take Over the World" was released on 26 April 2010, peaking at number 144 and "Scratch Your Name Upon My Lips", which was released on 6 December 2010.

Falcon is a California vintage style hard rock/ heavy metal power trio band formed in 2002 by guitarist/vocalist Perry Grayson. Falcon's sound is loud and raw. Though active in the 2000s, Falcon's sound is throwback to the late 1960s and early 1970s, and they take their cue from luminaries like Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Trapeze, Budgie, Thin Lizzy, Pentagram, Mountain, Free, Bang, Captain Beyond and Buffalo.

The Falcon rocket family is an American family of multi-use rocket launch vehicles developed and operated by Space Exploration Technologies ( SpaceX).

The vehicles in this family include the flight-tested Falcon 1 and Falcon 9. The Falcon 1 made its first successful flight on 28 September 2008, after several failures on the initial attempts. The larger Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-class Falcon 9 flew successfully into orbit on its maiden launch on 4 June 2010. The Falcon 9 is eventually intended to be a reusable vehicle. SpaceX is currently in production of the first Falcon Heavy launch system. Other designs for boosters with even larger payload lifting capabilities are currently being researched, but not yet confirmed.