CARRION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Carrion

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/kˈɛriən/ Listen

noun

Carrion n.

The dead and putrefying body or flesh of an animal; flesh so corrupted as to be unfit for food. "They did eat the dead carrions."

A contemptible or worthless person; a term of reproach. (Obs.) "Old feeble carrions."

adjective

Carrion adj. Of or pertaining to dead and putrefying carcasses; feeding on carrion. "A prey for carrion kites."

Carrion beetle (Zool.), any beetle that feeds habitually on dead animals; also called sexton beetle and burying beetle. There are many kinds, belonging mostly to the family Silphidae.

Carrion buzzard (Zool.), a South American bird of several species and genera (as Ibycter, Milvago, and Polyborus), which act as scavengers. See Caracara.

Carrion crow, the common European crow (Corvus corone) which feeds on carrion, insects, fruits, and seeds.

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Etymology of 'Carrion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books

... Achilles, sing, O Muse, The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece Unnumbered ills arose; which many a soul Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades Untimely sent; they on the battle plain Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs, And carrion birds; but so had Jove decreed, From that sad day when first in wordy war, The mighty Agamemnon, King of men, Confronted stood by Peleus' ...

— The Iliad • Homer

... and smell of carrion, so common in camping places during that first journey, also were gone. No bleached bones, even, showed where the exhausted dumb brute had died. The graves of the dead pioneers had all been leveled by the hoofs of stock ...

— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... carefully organized our plan of campaign. We fixed in our memories the exact location of each and every bush; we determined compass direction from camp, and any other bearings likely to prove useful in finding so small a spot in the dark. Then we left a boy to keep carrion birds off until sunset; and ...

— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... thick-strewn graves; here the jackal roams at night—it thrusts its pointed snout through the ephemeral masonry of townsmen's tombs or scratches downward within the ring of stones that mark some poor bedouin's corpse, to take toll of the carrion horrors beneath; so you may find many graves rifled. And if you come by day you will probably see, crouching among the ruins, certain old men, pariahs, animated lumps of dirt and rags. They are so uncouth and unclean, so utterly non-human, ...

— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... in fact, nothing alive which it can master seems to come amiss, and failing to make a meal from something it has caught and killed, the Arctic fox is glad, like foxes in more favoured lands, to feed on carrion. ...

— Heads and Tales • Various

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