ossifrage

== English == === Etymology === From Middle French ossifrage, from Latin ossifraga (“osprey”), ossifragus (“osprey”), from ossifragus (“bone breaking”). === Pronunciation === IPA(key): /ˈɒsɪfɹɪd͡ʒ/ === Noun === ossifrage (plural ossifrages) (archaic) Gypaetus barbatus, the bearded vulture, the diet of which is almost exclusively bone marrow. 1880, [uncredited English translator], The Man who Laughs by Victor Hugo, Book the Third, Chapter I: Calcareous lies, slate, and trap are still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like teeth from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and leveled those bristling, rugged peaks which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage. (obsolete) The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle. (British) The osprey. 1871 Robert Browning,Balustrion's Adventure: A Transcript from Euripides, line 117–24: And we were just about To turn and face the foe, as some tire bird Barbarians pelt at, drive with shouts away From shelter in what rocks, however rude, She makes for, to escape the kindled eye, Split beak, crook'd claw o' the creature, cormorant Or ossifrage, that, hardly baffled, hangs Afloat i' the foam, to take her if she turn. ==== See also ==== ossiphagy === References === For use of the term to refer to ospreys in England as well as the misidentification of sea eagles as ossifrage, see Theodore Gill, "The Osprey or Fishhawk: Its Characteristic and Habits," The Osprey: An Illustrated Magazine of Popular Ornithology, Volume V, no. 2, pp. 25–26 (Nov.-Dec. 1901). === Anagrams === foies gras == Latin == === Noun === ossifrage vocative singular of ossifragus