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Definition of "ossifrage" [os•si•frage]

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.

Use "ossifrage" in a sentence
  • "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."
  • "It well deserves its name ossifrage, bone breaker, for "not only does he push kids and lambs and even men off the rocks, but he takes the bones of animals that other birds of prey have denuded of the flesh high up into the air and lets them fall upon a stone in order to crack them and render them more digestible even for his enormous powers of deglutition."
  • "DEU 14: 12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,"