vulture

«vulture» in Mova's school dictionary: a large bird with a bald or nearly bald head that eats… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a vulture, vultures)

meaning for a pupil

1) A vulture is a large bird with a bald or nearly bald head that eats the meat of dead animals. tree →

2) (informal) A vulture is a person who waits to take advantage of someone else's trouble or bad luck. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons vultures are scavengers: they clean up dead animals, which stops diseases spreading, so they are important in food chains. They soar high on warm air currents and find food by sight or smell. Many vulture species are in danger because of poison. In stories and news, «like vultures» describes people crowding round to grab something. Phrases: «circling like vultures», «culture vulture» (someone who loves arts, joking).

examples

• Vultures circled high over the savannah. tree →
• A vulture's bald head stays clean when it feeds. tree →
• Vultures are nature's clean-up crew. tree →
• Without vultures, dead animals would spread disease. tree →
• The condor is a kind of New World vulture. tree →
• As soon as the shop closed, buyers came like vultures for the cheap stock. tree →
• My aunt is a real culture vulture — she visits every museum. tree →
• The Vulture thought this reasonable, and let Lambikin pass. tree →

note

Plural «vultures». Spelling: vul-ture. Trap: vultures rarely kill animals; they mostly eat ones already dead. Old-world vultures (Africa, Europe, Asia) and new-world vultures (Americas) look alike but are not close relatives.

In the corpora

• Vultures are not villains.
• The bearded vulture eats mostly bones and drops big ones onto rocks from high up to crack them.
• and the horned owl, and the pelican, and the carrion-vulture;
• But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the great vulture, and the bearded vulture, and the ospray;
• and the pelican, and the carrion-vulture, and the cormorant;

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «vulture» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.