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Motif · motif_swallow

Swallow

A small migratory bird, drawn in traditional tattooing with swept-back wings and a forked tail. A maritime heritage museum records it as one of the most popular tattoos in the navy and states plainly that it has a number of meanings - which is why this row carries three separate can_symbolize edges rather than one description. Its readings are attribute-dependent and additive: the count of birds carries one meaning, the addition of a dagger another.
Thin
Medium confidenceresearched

0 attested · 4 promoted1 source · T1

What the research says

motifs_seed
Category
animal
Variants
single swallow; paired swallows; swallow with dagger; swallow in flight
Common styles
american traditional
Common themes
maritime; memorial
Composition behaviors
paired symmetrically across the chest; repeated as a count

Provenance

1 resolved

  • Every tattoo makes a statement but what do they mean? (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 1

    The Historic Dockyard Chatham

    Maritime heritage museum article on naval tattoo designs. Verbatim: records show designs that are "marks of love, loss and life events" while others demonstrate "national identities, religious faith, and patriotic pride"; "Each swallow represents 5,000 nautical miles in a sailor's career." One of the few tier 1 sources that speaks about tattoo subject matter as lived human experience rather than as art history.

    museum · retrieved 2026-08-28

Related concepts

4 links

Associated with · 2

  • → outgoingMaritimeThemeThin
    strength 0.75promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_themes of motif_swallow ('maritime'); themes_seed.common_motifs of theme_maritime ('swallow'). Asserted independently from both ends of the relation; deduped to one edge. Confidence is the LOWER of the contributing rows, not the higher. Provenance inherited from the parent row(s): source_historic_dockyard_tattoos; source_rmg_tattoo_facts; source_rmg_tattoos_in_europe; the first is carried in source_id. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.75 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by TWO parent rows, one from each endpoint's own association column; the pack's scale reads 0.75 as 'frequent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

  • → outgoingMemorialSubthemeThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_themes of motif_swallow ('memorial'). No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

Frequently used in · 1

  • → outgoingAmerican TraditionalStyleThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_styles of motif_swallow ('american traditional'). No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

Supports composition · 1

  • → outgoingSymmetricalCompositionThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.composition_behaviors of motif_swallow ('paired symmetrically across the chest') [class EC]. Source is the supporting concept, target the composition, mirroring placement_supports. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.