Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Harpy   Listen
noun
Harpy  n.  (pl. harpies)  
1.
(Gr. Myth.) A fabulous winged monster, ravenous and filthy, having the face of a woman and the body of a vulture, with long claws, and the face pale with hunger. Some writers mention two, others three. "Both table and provisions vanished quite. With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard."
2.
One who is rapacious or ravenous; an extortioner. "The harpies about all pocket the pool."
3.
(Zool.)
(a)
The European moor buzzard or marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus).
(b)
A large and powerful, double-crested, short-winged American eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia). It ranges from Texas to Brazil.
Harpy bat (Zool.)
(a)
An East Indian fruit bat of the genus Harpyia (esp. Harpyia cephalotes), having prominent, tubular nostrils.
(b)
A small, insectivorous Indian bat (Harpiocephalus harpia).
Harpy fly (Zool.), the house fly.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Harpy" Quotes from Famous Books



... had one grievance—a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have sown But the crop was not our own; We have reaped, but harpy hands Swept the harvest from our lands; We were perishing for food, When, lo! in pitying mood, Our kindly rulers gave The fat fluid of the slave, While our corn filled the manger Of the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... victuals out of his mouth. Le Clerc thinks, that the Harpies were vast swarms of grasshoppers, which ravaged all Paphlagonia, and caused a famine in the dominions of Phineus; the word 'arbati,' whence the term 'Harpy' is derived, signifying 'a grasshopper;' and that the North wind blowing them into the Ionian sea, it gave rise to the saying, that the sons of Boreas pursued them so far. Diodorus Siculus does not mention the Harpies, though he speaks of the arrival of the Argonauts at ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... 'carpe, carpe!' To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. 'Life 's a poor player,'—then 'play out the play, Ye villains!' above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... that will pull you down; And AEque tandem shall that canker cry Unto the proudest peer of Britainy. Thou that compar'st him to a flying-fish, And threaten'st death whether he rise or fall, 'Tis not the hugest monster of the sea, Nor foulest harpy, that shall swallow him. Y. Mor. If in his absence thus he favours him, What will he do whenas he shall be present? Lan. That shall we see: look, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe


More quotes...


Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com