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)

1. (archaic) Gypaetus barbatus, the bearded vulture, the diet of which is almost exclusively bone marrow.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Leviticus 11:13:

     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 […]

   • 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.

   • 1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, “The Spider and the Wind. [Night 162.]”, in A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC:

     Yes; for these two passions, when they enter into a man, alter his wisdom and understanding and judgment and wit, and he is like the Ossifrage which, for precaution against the hunters, abode in the upper air, of the excess of his subtlety […]

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 14]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage.

2. (obsolete) The young of the sea eagle or bald eagle.
3. (British) The osprey.
   • 1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book X.] 3.”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 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

1. vocative singular of ossifragus