halcyon

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English Alceoun, from Latin halcyōn, alcyōn (“kingfisher”), from Ancient Greek ἀλκυών (alkuṓn).

noun

1. (poetic) A kingfisher whose nesting by the sea was said, in classical mythology, to cause the Gods to restrain the wind and waves.
   And, by the way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought another battle. c. 1880, Ambrose Bierce, On a Mountain
   1. The dead body of such a bird, said in Tudor times to act as a weather vane when hung from a beam.
2. A tropical kingfisher of the genus Halcyon, such as the sacred kingfisher (Halcyon sancta) of Australia.

adj

1. Pertaining to the halcyon or kingfisher.
2. (figurative) Calm, undisturbed, peaceful, serene.
   Reflections of this kind may have trifling weight with men who hope to see realized in America the halcyon scenes of the poetic or fabulous age. 1787, Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers No. 30
   Deep, halcyon repose. 1842, Thomas De Quincey, Cicero
   I had wander’d in rapture beneath them, and bask’d in the Halcyon clime. 1919, H.P. Lovecraft, The City
   The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess