VULTURE

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vulture mean? 

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

1. any of various large diurnal birds of prey having naked heads and weak claws and feeding chiefly on carrion

2. someone who attacks in search of booty

  Familiarity information: VULTURE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VULTURE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of various large diurnal birds of prey having naked heads and weak claws and feeding chiefly on carrion

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

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

bird of prey; raptor; raptorial bird (any of numerous carnivorous birds that hunt and kill other animals)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vulture"):

Aegypiidae; family Aegypiidae (in some classifications considered the family comprising the Old World vultures which are more often included in the family Accipitridae)

Old World vulture (any of several large vultures of Africa and Eurasia)

cathartid; New World vulture (large birds of prey superficially similar to Old World vultures)

Derivation:

vulturous (living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone who attacks in search of booty

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

marauder; piranha; predator; vulture

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

aggressor; assailant; assaulter; attacker (someone who attacks)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vulture"):

moss-trooper (a marauder and plunderer (originally operating in the bogs between England and Scotland))

 Context examples 

The drugs have caused sex charges in fish and amphibians and one type of anti-inflammatory drug has driven vultures in India close to extinction.

(Experts Warn Prescription, Over-the-Counter Drugs Polluting World's Rivers, VOA)

Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in the west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

At the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered about us without a moment's intermission, like a great vulture: gorging himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

More broadly, the researchers used the bees as a model organism to better understand the impact of changing land uses on the diversity of species that make up a community of organisms and, in turn, their delivery of ecosystem services, such as crop pollination, water filtration (by mussels, for example) or carrion scavenging (vulture feeding).

(Diverse Bee Communities Best for Apple Orchards, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)