Ossifrage
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Gypaetus barbatus, the bearded vulture, the diet of which is almost exclusively bone marrow. archaic
"And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray […]"
- 2 The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle. obsolete
- 3 The osprey. British
"And their young Ospraies bee counted a kind of Ossifragi: from them come the lesser Geires, they againe breed the greater, which engender not at all. Some reckon yet another kind of Ægle, which they cal Barbatæ; and the Tuscanes, Ossifrage."
Example
More examples"And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray […]"
Etymology
From Middle French ossifrage, from Latin ossifraga (“osprey”), ossifragus (“osprey”), from ossifragus (“bone breaking”).
Related phrases
More for "ossifrage"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.