OSTRICH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ostrich mean? 

• OSTRICH (noun)
  The noun OSTRICH has 2 senses:

1. a person who refuses to face reality or recognize the truth (a reference to the popular notion that the ostrich hides from danger by burying its head in the sand)

2. fast-running African flightless bird with two-toed feet; largest living bird

  Familiarity information: OSTRICH used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OSTRICH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who refuses to face reality or recognize the truth (a reference to the popular notion that the ostrich hides from danger by burying its head in the sand)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("ostrich" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Fast-running African flightless bird with two-toed feet; largest living bird

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

ostrich; Struthio camelus

Hypernyms ("ostrich" is a kind of...):

flightless bird; ratite; ratite bird (flightless birds having flat breastbones lacking a keel for attachment of flight muscles: ostriches; cassowaries; emus; moas; rheas; kiwis; elephant birds)

Holonyms ("ostrich" is a member of...):

genus Struthio; Struthio (type genus of the Struthionidae: African ostriches)

 Context examples 

They found the faster each ostrich ran, the more it tended to flap, with larger wings providing more lift.

(Scientific study suggests dinosaurs flapped their wings as they ran, Wikinews)

If it were indeed a bird—and what animal could leave such a mark? —its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Sir Nigel was still in his velvet dress of peace, with flat velvet cap of maintenance, and curling ostrich feather clasped in a golden brooch.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She wore a great hat with a white curling ostrich feather, and from under its brim her two bold, black eyes stared out with a look of anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that she thought less of them than they could do of her.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They also attached sets of artificial wings to juvenile ostriches about the same size as Caudipteryx.

(Scientific study suggests dinosaurs flapped their wings as they ran, Wikinews)

In the meantime Sir Oliver had followed his brother knight, and the two paced the poop together, Sir Nigel in his plum-colored velvet suit with flat cap of the same, adorned in front with the Lady Loring's glove and girt round with a curling ostrich feather.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to the shelter of the rocks one day—a great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The authors of the report used a mathematical model, a robot, and young ostriches to test their hypotheses.

(Scientific study suggests dinosaurs flapped their wings as they ran, Wikinews)