Definition of "carrion" [car•ri•on]

• Dead and decaying flesh. (noun)
• Of or similar to dead and decaying flesh. (adjective)
• Feeding on such flesh. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I soak up a few fingers of a bottle of mescal and sweat a lot at a table in the rear of the cantina with my back to the wall, and I watch the shadows of the zopilotes heaving past, the mangy black vultures that seem to be in the city's official employ to remove carrion from the streets, and I think mostly about what crybabies Wilson and Bryan, his paunchy windbag of a Secretary of State, have turned out to be."
• "It's bald for one reason only, no feathers, because when it gets down to carrion, which is a dead animal they start eating, bacteria cannot grow on its head, cannot grow in the feathers."
• "So they're being forced to eat birds, carrion, which is dead animals."