Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word harpy. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word harpy, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say harpy in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word harpy you have here. The definition of the word harpy will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofharpy, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
(mythology) A mythologicalcreature generally depicted as a bird-of-prey with the head of maiden, a face pale with hunger and long claws on her hands personifying the destructive power of storm winds.
1927, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Outlaw of Torn, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:
But her most subtle wiles proved ineffectual in ridding her, even for a moment, of her harpy jailer[…]
2011 March 17, Toby Young, “Mumsnet isn't representative of the 'squeezed middle'. It's just a bunch of Guardian-reading, laptop-wielding harpies”, in The Telegraph, archived from the original on 2011-03-20:
[…] Ed Miliband has yet to come up with a definition of “the squeezed middle” that excludes anyone, but you can bet your bottom dollar he has these laptop-wielding harpies in mind.
