Ossifrage

Quick meaning: Ossifrage is a noun meaning (British) The osprey.

Meaning

(British) The osprey.

More Meanings

1. (archaic) Gypaetus barbatus, the bearded vulture, the diet of which is almost exclusively bone marrow.
2. (obsolete) The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle.

Example Sentences

And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray […]

And their young Ospraies bee counted a kind of Ossifragi: from them come the lesser Geires, they againe breed the greater, which engender not at all. Some reckon yet another kind of Ægle, which they cal Barbatæ; and the Tuscanes, Ossifrage.

Yes; for these two passions, when they enter into a man, alter his wisdom and understanding and judgment and wit, and he is like the Ossifrage which, for precaution against the hunters, abode in the upper air, of the excess of his subtlety […]

Calcareous lies, slate, and trap are still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like teeth from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and leveled those bristling, rugged peaks which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage.

Word Forms

• ossifrages

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include osprey, ossifraga, breakbones, lammergeier, ornithophagy, grouse.

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