PREDATORY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Predatory

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/prˈɛdətˌɔri/ Listen

adjective

Predatory adj.

Characterized by plundering; practicing rapine; plundering; pillaging; as, a predatory excursion; a predatory party. "A predatory war."

Hungry; ravenous; as, predatory spirits. (Obs.) "Exercise... maketh the spirits more hot and predatory."

(Zool.) Living by preying upon other animals; carnivorous.

See images of 'Predatory'

Etymology of 'Predatory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Predatory" Quotes from Famous Books

... surrounded by powerful tribes of Indians, who are a source of constant terror and annoyance to the inhabitants. Separating into small predatory bands, and always mounted, they overrun the country, devastating farms, destroying crops, driving off whole herds of cattle, and occasionally murdering the inhabitants or carrying them into captivity. The great roads leading into the country are infested with them, whereby traveling ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... would shield and bear away up in her arms—as if Leonora were a hungry dog, trying to spring up at a lamb that she was carrying. Yes, she felt as if Edward's love were a precious lamb that she were bearing away from a cruel and predatory beast. For, at that time, Leonora appeared to her as a cruel and predatory beast. Leonora, Leonora with her hunger, with her cruelty had driven Edward to madness. He must be sheltered by his love for her ...

— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... a violent hatred for him and for the small man, too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and mutilator of the language, of ...

— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... because it is impossible for us now to raise an army capable of meeting him in the field: we must plunder [Footnote: Make predatory incursions, as Livy says, "popula bundi magis quam justo more belli." Jacobs: den Krieg als Freibeuter fahren. Another German: Streifzuge zu machen (guerilla warfare). Leland: "harass him with depredations." Wilson, an old English ...

— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... his move? There was a French general the other day who proposed to march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen: there is always some excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, ...

— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

More quotes...