Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  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 |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Harpy" Quotes from Famous Books



... eye to see him if he should slip and be dashed to atoms on the unconscious rocks—this thought almost overmastered him, unmanned him, filled him with a weird sense of indescribable horror. He battled against it with all his might, but it came on him like a foul harpy again and again, sickening his whole soul, making his forehead glisten with the damp dews of anticipated death. At last he came to a stunted willow which had twisted its dry roots into the thin soil, and, clinging ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged harpy like ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look from that haggard and painted old harpy, compared to which the gaze of Ugolino is quite cheerful); after withdrawing your elbow out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from which cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you knew you were squeezing poor Bob into ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on to describe her ecstasy, but Marie Louise broke in: "It's Fraeulein's work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend, the harpy!" ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... old harpy!" I exclaimed, being now in a sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. "Where is the money? Where is ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com