a. [f. FLIGHT sb.1 + -LESS.] Incapable of flying: said of birds.
1875. trans. Schmidt’s Desc. & Darw., 186. The scanty but wide-spread remains of the order of flightless birds indicate a period at which, in a more peaceful environment, their far more numerous wingless ancestry made less use of their pinions, and natural selection endowed them with greater strength and nimbleness of leg.
1889. A. R. Wallace, Darwinism, 145. Thus may we explain the origin of so many flightless and rather bulky birds in oceanic islands, as the dodo, the cassowary, and the extinct moas.
