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3 definitions found

From: DICT.TW English-Chinese Dictionary 英漢字典

 os·si·frage /ˈɑsəfrɪʤ, ˌfreʤ/
 魚鷹

From: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

 Os·si·frage n.  Zool. (a) The lammergeir. (b) The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle. [Obs.]
 

From: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary

 Ossifrage
    Heb. peres = to "break" or "crush", the lammer-geier, or bearded
    vulture, the largest of the whole vulture tribe. It was an
    unclean bird (Lev. 11:13; Deut. 14:12). It is not a gregarious
    bird, and is found but rarely in Palestine. "When the other
    vultures have picked the flesh off any animal, he comes in at
    the end of the feast, and swallows the bones, or breaks them,
    and swallows the pieces if he cannot otherwise extract the
    marrow. The bones he cracks [hence the appropriateness of the
    name ossifrage, i.e., "bone-breaker"] by letting them fall on a
    rock from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself
    to these delicacies, but whenever he has an opportunity will
    devour lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by
    pushing them over cliffs, when he has watched his opportunity;
    and he has been known to attack men while climbing rocks, and
    dash them against the bottom. But tortoises and serpents are his
    ordinary food...No doubt it was a lammer-geier that mistook the
    bald head of the poet AEschylus for a stone, and dropped on it
    the tortoise which killed him" (Tristram's Nat. Hist.).