(n.) A fabulous winged monster, ravenous and filthy, having the face of a woman and the body of a vulture, with long claws, and the face pale with hunger. Some writers mention two, others three.
(n.) One who is rapacious or ravenous; an extortioner.
(n.) The European moor buzzard or marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus).
(n.) A large and powerful, double-crested, short-winged American eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia). It ranges from Texas to Brazil.
Example Sentences:
(1) Whatever else Valérie Trierweiler has been portrayed as – vengeful harpy, ambitious meddler, undignified ex – she is also a woman who has had her heart broken.
(2) British feminists being as niggardly in the Sun 's respect as they are about subsidising lap-dancing clubs, visiting Formula One brothels and subscribing to the late men's magazine, Nuts , a periodical brought to its knees by jealous harpies.
(3) "Everything has declined, especially big mammals, there used to be harpy eagles flying in the sky, sloths hanging from trees, but oil exploration is killing the rainforest.
(4) By failing to confront our ghouls – and their tabloid harpies – we merely let them haunt us again.
(5) I’ve said a lot of shit in my life – and you can certainly quote me on the record using that word – but I would never suggest anything like that.” Things Erickson has suggested include the notion that “Obama’s marxist harpy wife would go Lorena Bobbitt on him” – Bobbitt was a Virginia woman who in 1993 cut off her husband’s penis – should he even think about it”.
(6) They hand out an humorous flyers to the public, congratulating men on successfully keeping "harpies and gossips" out of their ranks and maintaining all power within their wonderfully firm male grasp.
(7) In person, Brick is relaxed and delightful company – nothing like the arrogant harpy I'd been led to expect.
(8) Or rather, she was a sort of ultra-acerbic clown: an outlandishly dressed and painted pixie-harpy, who said whatever she liked.
(9) Enter Parsifal, a "pure fool" and Christ-like redeemer figure, who alone can resist the lure of Klingsor's harpies, restore the spear to the knights, cure Amfortas and give Klingsor's arch-temptress Kundry the release from earthly life she so ardently desires.
(10) Forget Donald Trump – Megyn Kelly won the Republican debate Read more Erickson himself, however, has a long history of making disparaging remarks about women, including calling first lady Michelle Obama a “marxist harpy” and Texas politician Wendy Davis “abortion Barbie”.
(11) Elle Fanning is that scheming harpy, Princess Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty.
(12) She has been pilloried as the scorned woman and the vindictive harpy.
(13) The mood swings were back with a vengeance – plunging me into unplumbable depths of despair and turning me into an irascible harpy in the days before my period.
(14) It’s less the White House than the Black Tower, sending out its Breitbartian orcs and alt-right winged harpies to poison the politics of a nation.
Rapacious
Definition:
(a.) Given to plunder; disposed or accustomed to seize by violence; seizing by force.
(a.) Accustomed to seize food; subsisting on prey, or animals seized by violence; as, a tiger is a rapacious animal; a rapacious bird.
(1) Another member of her circle, the rapacious slum landlord Peter Rachman, had himself become a symbol of the greed and materialism of the affluent society, adding more spice to the mix.
(2) Germany has many people in rented accommodation, but they also have much stronger tenancy laws and a much longer-term and less rapacious investment model.
(3) Eighteen years after first dipping its toe in the world of banking, Tesco is launching its first current account on Tuesday, and says it is targeting people fed up with "smoke and mirrors" and "rapacious" bank charges.
(4) Miliband offered little new on policy apart from a commitment to improve corporate governance so businesses are allowed to invest for the long term, and allow established shareholders to protect companies from rapacious takeovers.
(5) He was the most rapacious empire-builder of the regime, with huge powers over the economy.
(6) Capital rich but income poor older people sit in the cold rather than keep themselves warm because they are fearful of releasing equity in a rapacious market or desperately want to pass something on to their families.
(7) In the struggle against colonialism and racism, that's what's emerged: that black men are strong, and sexually rapacious but only towards women; homosexuals and white men are weak and feminine.
(8) Life for millions of people under the most rapacious and reactionary government in 150 years has diminished.
(9) Nor is the state rapacious: if you qualify, two-bedroom apartments in newish public blocks rent for around £150 a month, there are 40 sheltered housing units for the elderly that rent for less than £30 a month, and if you’re old and poor enough, someone will come and shovel your snow away for nothing.
(10) This is the standard model of rapacious capitalism, fueled and developed in the tech sector.
(11) Yet there are still too many obstacles to the free flow of scientific information, from rapacious publishers to restrictive intellectual property laws and unsympathetic research institutions.
(12) But while the brutal and vindictive treatment of Khodorkovsy has rightly sparked indignation abroad it has failed to ignite the same passions at home, where he is seen as a rapacious oligarch and sympathy is in short supply.
(13) But there is more to Beverly Hills than rapacious officials and suffering citizens.
(14) For Abbott, politics is a vocation, not a springboard for eternal political leadership or financial rapaciousness.
(15) This time around, rising house prices are producing the opposite: a feel-bad factor among young adults permanently excluded from buying and furious about rapacious rents, combined with a growing sense of despair among the middle-aged no longer able to move up the fabled property ladder because each rung is financially just too far away from the one before.
(16) Particular ire has been directed at Flowers because he worked for the Co-op, especially by those who still delude themselves that it lives up to its name as an ethical bank, despite recent events that have seen it fall into the hands of hedge funds and other such rapacious institutions.
(17) Norway exports its gathered knowledge about oil production to all parts of the world, including advising foreign governments how to secure the best deals from the hard-headed executives of rapacious oil companies.
(18) England had become a nation of penalty-missers, contract-outers, public-school twits and twats, bigots and Bullingdon club bullies, snarling bulldogs and rapacious bankers.A country in which even Labour leaders preached deregulation, prized unfettered wealth and puckered up to the world’s media magnates.
(19) If social rents are cheaper than market rents, maybe, just maybe, it’s not because social rent is subsidised – a lie debunked over and over again – but because private markets are rapacious and volatile, and will happily spew out the poor after making as much profit as possible.
(20) It treats them not as hopeless victims to be pitied with charity, nor as sources of potential value for a rapacious financial sector, but rather as human beings with an innate right to the wealth that we draw from our planet’s common resources.