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/prˈɛdətˌɔri/ Listen

adjective

Predatory adj.

Characterized by plundering; practicing rapine; plundering; pillaging; as, a predatory excursion; a predatory party. "A predatory war."

Hungry; ravenous; as, predatory spirits. (Obs.) "Exercise... maketh the spirits more hot and predatory."

(Zool.) Living by preying upon other animals; carnivorous.

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Etymology of 'Predatory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Predatory" Quotes from Famous Books

... Arabia. The wandering tribes of the desert, tempted by the weak condition to which the Assyrian conquest had reduced Samaria, made raids, it appears, into the territory at their pleasure, and carried off plunder. Sargon determined to chastise these predatory bands, and made an expedition into the interior, where "he subdued the uncultivated plains of the remote Arabia, which had never before given tribute to Assyria," and brought under subjection the Thamudites, and several other Arab ...

— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start a quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults any other man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only to stab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron, the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They will applaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. They will willingly take all the crime, with only a quarter of the conscience: they will be as ready to share the memory ...

— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... Ammianus (xiv. 4) gives a lively description of the wandering and predatory life of the Saracens, who stretched from the confines of Assyria to the cataracts of the Nile. It appears from the adventures of Malchus, which Jerom has related in so entertaining a manner, that the high road between Beraea and ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... you know he won't touch it after it begins to decompose, but a bear will. And that's the reason we generally think it is a bear that does the killing, when in reality it is a mountain lion who has had his fill and left the remains for other predatory animals, while he has gone off to hunt for ...

— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... imply of the hunt, what of the predatory dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another ...

— The Children • Alice Meynell

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