turkey buzzard
1
7.8
- noun
- /ˈtɜrki ˈbʌzərd/
- US
:
buitre pavo
- He saw eagles and hawks, the lazy carouse of turkey buzzards floating in circles on invisible currents of air.
Examples
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Riding across the northeast corner of the ranch, Kurt spotted a pack of turkey buzzards wheeling in the cloudless morning light.
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While flying on a low-level flight over the bayous of Louisiana, going over 400 miles per hour, a turkey buzzard crashed through the windscreen of Doug's jet, half of it hitting his upper left arm and chest.
Blog text (30) -
"Hey," the man says, "how come you old turkey buzzard setting here?"
-
It's a turkey buzzard.
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Old turkey buzzard says:
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The way the Apaches tell it... a man was riding in the desert, and he come across a vulture... the kind they call turkey buzzards in Arizona... setting on a rock.
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Riding across the northeast corner of the ranch, Kurt spotted a pack of turkey buzzards wheeling in the cloudless morning light.
Fiction book (2002) -
With one lone turkey buzzard riding the thermals, the turquoise sky seemed a million times bigger, hotter, and emptier than the desert around them.
Fiction book (2001) -
At our approach to the first of his two lanes, some turkey buzzards flapped away from a carcass in the ditch.
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We knew it was time to hop back on the bikes and leave when a flock of turkey buzzards that had been circling lazily across the lake drifted our way.
Synonyms
42
3.3
A large bird with a bare head that eats dead animals
4
5.9
A large bird that eats dead animals and is found in North and South America
3
6.0
A large bird with dark feathers that eats dead animals
A large American vulture with a red head that eats dead animals
A large bird in the Americas that eats dead animals and often has a bare head
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun is compositional: 'turkey' modifies 'buzzard' to indicate a particular kind of buzzard (a bird), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a bird species related to or resembling a turkey-buzzard. There is no idiomatic or metaphorical shift—the phrase names a taxonomic type—so its meaning is directly derivable from its parts.
Etymology
Turkey buzzard comes from early settlers who thought the bird's bare red head and dark body looked a little like a wild turkey, and its habit of circling and feeding on dead animals made it a kind of buzzard. So the name now means a large 'vulture' that eats dead animals.