BUZZARD • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Buzzard

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/bˈəzərd/ Listen

noun

Buzzard n.

(Zool.) A bird of prey of the Hawk family, belonging to the genus Buteo and related genera.

(Zool.) In the United States, a term used for the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura), and sometimes indiscriminately to any vulture. Note: The Buteo vulgaris is the common buzzard of Europe. The American species (of which the most common are Buteo borealis, Buteo Pennsylvanicus, and Buteo lineatus) are usually called hen hawks. The rough-legged buzzard, or bee hawk, of Europe (Pernis apivorus) feeds on bees and their larvae, with other insects, and reptiles. The moor buzzard of Europe is Circus aeruginosus. See Turkey buzzard, and Carrion buzzard.

Bald buzzard, the fishhawk or osprey. See Fishhawk.

A blockhead; a dunce. "It is common, to a proverb, to call one who can not be taught, or who continues obstinately ignorant, a buzzard."

adjective

Buzzard adj. Senseless; stupid. (R. & Obs.)

See images of 'Buzzard'

Etymology of 'Buzzard'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Buzzard" Quotes from Famous Books

... delicious taste of the bread itself. I was hungry this morning and I ate my half loaf to the last crumb—and wanted more. Then I lay down for a moment in the shade and looked up into the sky through the thin outer branches of the hawthorn. A turkey buzzard was lazily circling cloud-high above me: a frog boomed intermittently from the little marsh, and there were bees ...

— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie, or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up; well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired novices nervously ...

— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... is the Mexican Don Jose Calderon One of God's countrymen. Land of the buzzard. Cheap silver dollar, and Cacti and murderers. Why has he left his land Land of the lazy man, Land of the pulque Land of the bull fight, Fleas ...

— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... in the cedars as he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with banks that were green to the very water's edge, and Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were ...

— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... greased straight up to the mayor and McKenty, and that Cowperwood can have anything he wants at any time. Tom Dowling eats out of his hand, and you know what that means. Old General Van Sickle is working for him in some way. Did you ever see that old buzzard flying around if there wasn't something ...

— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

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