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predatory
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predator

show 187 more with this conextual meaning
  • It was a cruel mouth now, cruel and predatory.   (source)
    predatory = of someone who victimizes others
  • Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water.†   (source)
  • We were the apex predators, each one of us alive only because our ancestors had killed and eaten other animals, outcompeted everything else to survive.†   (source)
  • But when Manchester became crowded with factories in the early 1800s, the soot from the smokestacks began to settle on every conceivable surface, including the bark of the trees; and the lightly speckled wings that had served to protect the majority of peppered moths suddenly exposed them remorselessly to their predators—even as the darker wings of the aberrations rendered them invisible.†   (source)
  • To them, payday lenders were predatory sharks, charging high interest rates on loans and exorbitant fees for cashed checks.†   (source)
  • The car slowed to a creep after missing us, like a confused predator who'd overrun his prey.†   (source)
  • They look almost predatory.†   (source)
  • In a general way we mean how our species' excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey.†   (source)
  • A school of fish zipped by my legs, and I stared at them in wonder until I realized that they might be fleeing some larger predator.†   (source)
  • There were a few normal people as well, but they faded into insignificance next to the predatory forms moving gracefully through the halls.†   (source)
  • But von Rumpel is the predator here.†   (source)
  • Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against starvation.†   (source)
  • If he was going to actually watch a nature documentary, the only kind that he could suffer through was one where a fierce predator took down a wide-eyed furball.†   (source)
  • Or at least they weren't predatory and vengeful.†   (source)
  • I heard a loud roar like an animal's, like a predator snarling.†   (source)
  • The pipe bowl, like some predator, or seducer, drew down the flame.†   (source)
  • I remember that his eyes scanned the crowd with predatory detachment, though at the time I only wondered whom he was looking for.†   (source)
  • He was drawing out the inevitable, a predator playing with his meal before eating it.†   (source)
  • Then today I saw him with a banding cage and a pair of Predators, so I know he's a pro.†   (source)
  • Same ash-blond hair, blue eyes, and pointed smile, making her look like a wild, predatory cat.†   (source)
  • Like all the lessons at the Institute, this one was a barrage of details — pages and pages worth — but the gist was that sickness, like a hungry predator, lurked in every nook and cranny.†   (source)
  • GEORGE PINS A PREDATOR   (source)
  • The smile is not sinister or predatory.†   (source)
  • And so she was, this predatory airship, skimming over our tail fins and gradually overtaking us, only a few dozen feet overhead.†   (source)
  • A predator approaches: gray jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head.†   (source)
  • In nature there are always predators and prey.†   (source)
  • And the smell of fear further incites the predator.†   (source)
  • Rahel stopped and turned around, and on her heart a drab moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory wings.†   (source)
  • But I'm down and I feel the earth beneath me crying and screaming as the hole tears it apart, like a living creature being eaten alive by a hungry predator.†   (source)
  • I'd spend hours rooting through the dusty old shed at the bottom of our garden, hunting the cobwebs for lurking eight-legged predators.†   (source)
  • Classic predator behaviour.†   (source)
  • I think of predators dropping silently from trees: I think of enormous cats with glowing amber eyes, just like his.†   (source)
  • She gave me a rather predatory smile.†   (source)
  • There was something menacing about it, as if it were a predator crouched in the city, waiting for its next victim.†   (source)
  • They were certain that Count Olaf was lurking nearby, like some predator waiting to pounce on the children while they weren't looking.†   (source)
  • Like any good predator, it focused on the moving target —Jaz—and lunged at her.†   (source)
  • He knew that but he also knew that Brint, or whoever he was, was sitting across from him, waiting, like a predator, an enemy—he was certain of that now—but he knew also that he had to reveal everything to him, that he could not do it alone.†   (source)
  • other boys of the South Tharsis Relocation Camps, either ran with gangs or faced the option of being prey to every self-proclaimed predator in the camps.†   (source)
  • The ancient predatory instinct could surface without warning.†   (source)
  • Old Cob tucked away his bowl of stew with the predatory efficiency of a lifetime bachelor.†   (source)
  • I'm the world's best predator, aren't I?†   (source)
  • The title of the award came from the notion that when penguins are about to jump into water that might contain predators, well, somebody's got to be the first penguin.†   (source)
  • The predator, the coward, and my murderous mother, who lived to destroy her own child.†   (source)
  • In my life as Adah I must come to my own terms with the Predator.†   (source)
  • Nadia would never be able to determine what had become of them, but she always hoped they had found a way to depart unharmed, abandoning the city to the predations of warriors on both sides who seemed content to flatten it in order to possess it.†   (source)
  • EVERYONE KNOWS BY NOW ABOUT PREDATORS, THE UAVs that supplied a lot of intelligence to American forces during the war.†   (source)
  • But being good at flying is not so necessary if food is dug from the ground and there are no predators.†   (source)
  • He was like a cat, by his own admission, a lone predator.†   (source)
  • Her features were narrow and predatory, almost cruel.†   (source)
  • They were predatory by nature but they often came just to say they had seen it, in the spirit of tourists making their first trip to the Grand Canyon.†   (source)
  • Dilinun is pure, clean and bright, there is no sickness, people do not grow old, predatory animals do not hunt.†   (source)
  • Not to mention the sixth one, same one a goat or an antelope or a zebra has, the one that warns vulnerable grazing animals of the presence of a predator.†   (source)
  • But there I only gave examples of the kinds of people — highly promiscuous, sexually predatory — who are critical to epidemics of sexually transmitted disease.†   (source)
  • The predator was where the entrance had been.†   (source)
  • Most of the passengers, above all the Europeans, abandoned the pestilential stench of their cabins and spent the night walking the decks, brushing away all sorts of predatory creatures with the same towel they used to dry their incessant perspiration, and at dawn they were exhausted and swollen with bites.†   (source)
  • A predatory look filled the old woman's features.†   (source)
  • If she was an animal predator, we'd be obliged to try to help her.†   (source)
  • Laurel said he'd have to get himself under control or leave, and he sprang from the couch like a predator, crowding, towering over her.†   (source)
  • And now he really did look like a vicious predator.†   (source)
  • There was a side to him that was almost predatory.†   (source)
  • His promise fell, soft as a premonition, followed by the bobcat's predatory growl, 'Me too.'†   (source)
  • Predators, prey.†   (source)
  • Despite the anger and disbelief of his neighbors, he refused to kill predators or to allow hunting on his land, permitting animals that other ranchers exterminated — rattlesnakes, coyotes, badgers, ground squirrels, gophers, and prairie dogs — to flourish.†   (source)
  • The only good I could see in killing one was getting rid of a vicious predatory animal.†   (source)
  • Humans and monkeys are both primates, and Ebola feeds on primates in the same way that a predator consumes certain kinds of flesh.†   (source)
  • In many poor countries, the problem is not so much individual thugs and rapists but an entire culture of sexual predation.†   (source)
  • Humans feel threatened by our ability to bring them such intense pleasure during an act they consider dangerous and abhorrent, so they have labeled us as predators.†   (source)
  • She stood there motionless, like a small animal caught invading the territory of a predator, paralyzed and unable to move.†   (source)
  • Normally, a moose will run as far as he can from any predator.†   (source)
  • Some people think it started as a way of showing off the teeth to scare predators away, or as a way to stretch facial muscles, or to signal to the rest of the tribe that it's time to sleep.†   (source)
  • From there they could carry on a "predatory war," Washington said.†   (source)
  • I went limp, the way animals sometimes do at the moment of the predator's leap.†   (source)
  • The dune fields, the alkali flats, the whiteness, the whole white sea-bottomed world, the lines of white haze in the distance, the six-thousand-year-old mummified baby found in a cave near White City, yes, and there were animals that bleached themselves white over the eons, a once-brown mouse that color-matched itself to the gypsum drifts to escape the gaze of predators.†   (source)
  • In fact, the "bloodbath" school of criminology was touting exactly the opposite theory—that an increase in the teenage share of the population would produce a crop of superpredators who would lay the nation low.†   (source)
  • They say if more kids would report—they called them predators—they could stop at least some of them.†   (source)
  • He glanced over at Cynthia, who had looked petrified ever since the predatory bird had appeared.†   (source)
  • The woods echo with it, the howl of a mother animal mourning its young, a tiny creature lost to a predator in the great cycle of things.†   (source)
  • Merrill said this guy was older, married, kinky, predatory.†   (source)
  • But the German shepherd is much smaller than these predators.†   (source)
  • Their white-knuckled grips on their rifles; the way they hold their elbows tight near their bodies as if to keep their arms from shaking; the way they move shoulder to shoulder, like a school of fish clustering near a predator.†   (source)
  • She loved nothing in the world except this woman's son, wanted him alive more than anybody, but hadn't the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her.†   (source)
  • Even now, though obviously not hunting, it had a crafty, predatory look that made the watchers among the dog roses shiver.†   (source)
  • He smiled, and while not unfriendly, it was undoubtedly the smile of a predator.†   (source)
  • But my wrists were limp with rage at this predatory woman, whomsoever she be.†   (source)
  • The predators were now advancing on him.†   (source)
  • It didn't matter that technically, they were predator and prey.†   (source)
  • He smiled again, perfect teeth, eyes that were both amused and predatory.†   (source)
  • Pakistani stringers would run into the lobby with stories like news about an American Predator drone the Taliban had shot down and the bidding wars would begin.†   (source)
  • As if he senses her glance, Marcus turns and looks Helene over with a predatory gaze of ownership that makes my hands itch to strangle him.†   (source)
  • The beast called Time is our great predator, and there is no escape from it.†   (source)
  • No man in Castle Black knew the woods as well as Dywen did, the trees and streams, the plants that could be eaten, the ways of predator and prey.†   (source)
  • He smiled, but Lee told herself she'd imagined that brief predatory flash in his eyes.†   (source)
  • David Webb was disappearing from his psyche, only the predator Jason Bourne would remain.†   (source)
  • That will attract predators.†   (source)
  • Not sexual, but predatory.†   (source)
  • Seabiscuit, like any prey animal, was hard-wired to bound forward at the whip's brush over his hindquarters, a simulation of a predator's grasp.†   (source)
  • What if the visitors are predatory?†   (source)
  • They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers who—†   (source)
  • This would be a routine kill, with the unfortunate beast never even aware of the coming predator.†   (source)
  • Joe skidded to a halt, put Nina down, spun toward the predator, drawing the pistol from his waistband, thankful that he had not pitched it away earlier.†   (source)
  • One of us is going to have to blink first, so I take a tentative step back as if I'm trying to evade a predator, hoping he won't notice that I'm moving until I'm already gone.†   (source)
  • Predators, it seemed, were out in force tonight.†   (source)
  • They're sensitive to predation, men bearing gifts.†   (source)
  • We're concerned about lawsuits and predatory people, and I guess we know more about our surroundings and it's caused us to see danger everywhere.†   (source)
  • He was pure predator, always looking for a weakness, always trying to gain an advantage.†   (source)
  • Industrial profit margins are notoriously thin to begin with—typically in the low single digits—and reduced profits or losses would drive down Standard's stock price, making it a likely target for predatory acquisition.†   (source)
  • I sensed their fear, but the predator within me was desperate for release.†   (source)
  • Merry, that is, until a crust of bread fell on the road or a sweetmeat toppled from an over-ambitious pyramid when, all childishness lost, all play forgotten, they fought ferociously in the dust for the food ....my children had fought thus too, I remembered, but time had mellowed the memory or dimmed it, for it did not seem to me that they had struggled like these: teeth bared, nails clawing, ready, predatory like animals.†   (source)
  • A natural predator and chameleon, Lavon was regarded as the finest street surveillance artist the Office ever produced.†   (source)
  • Down the court he would lope toward me, directly toward me, looking at me with those blazing predator's eyes, his body moving with a cold fluency, his dribble confident.†   (source)
  • The orders plainly stated that my first task should have been to conduct a census and general survey of wolves, followed by an intensive study of "wolf—caribou—predator—prey relationships."†   (source)
  • It was some secret and predatory animal.†   (source)
  • But of the creatures who dwelled within the forest, some were predators; these knew no boundaries of limits, coming and going as they chose.†   (source)
  • But around them, choking them to death, coiled the dodders — the predatory vines, sucking the nutriment out of their roots, gripping the trees with tentacles like tightening tourniquets.†   (source)
  • Her heel went down, almost without her knowing, on the idealized, dreaming, and predatory face of that Sicilian bandit.†   (source)
  • One of the monstrous leonine predators they called stobor approached the barricade in broad daylight, looked at it, lashed his tail, then clawed his way up the bluff and headed downstream again.†   (source)
  • The greatest predator the world has ever known.†   (source)
  • A predator could kill a child just by shaking it, snapping the neck.†   (source)
  • These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet.†   (source)
  • Predators took children—they preferred children—and they left nothing behind.†   (source)
  • They expected predators to be rare, of course.†   (source)
  • But increasingly the question that faced them was: where were the predators?†   (source)
  • These apatosaurs are so big they don't really have any predators.†   (source)
  • They might have no predators in the contemporary world, no checks on their growth.†   (source)
  • Studies of predator/prey populations in the game parks of Africa and India suggested that, roughly speaking, there was one predatory carnivore for every four hundred herbivores.†   (source)
    predatory = of animals:  living by hunting and eating other animals

    of people or organizations:  given to victimizing others
  • So these velociraptors look like reptiles, with the skin and general appearance of reptiles, but they move like birds, with the speed and predatory intelligence of birds.†   (source)
  • When a carnivore finally brought down an animal, it was watchful for another predator, who might attack it and steal its prize.†   (source)
  • The most famous predator in the history of the world: the mighty tyrant lizard, known as Tyrannosaurus rex.†   (source)
  • Studies of predator/prey populations in the game parks of Africa and India suggested that, roughly speaking, there was one predatory carnivore for every four hundred herbivores.†   (source)
  • A predator.†   (source)
  • "The reason I ask," Malcolm said, "is that I'm told large predators such as lions and tigers are not born man-eaters.†   (source)
  • Animals like Dromaeosaurus, Oviraptor, Velociraptor, and Coelurus—predators three to six feet tall—must have been found here in abundance.†   (source)
  • But where were the smaller predators?†   (source)
  • A dozen procompsognathids, delicate little predators no larger than ducks, stood at the edge of the jungle, chittering excitedly as the men climbed out of the car.†   (source)
  • There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication.†   (source)
  • I started—did her legends of the predatory blood-drinker include this?†   (source)
  • Above them flew the vampires, hissing and screeching, filling the night with predatory cries.†   (source)
  • Over his shoulder, Evangeline prowls like a predatory cat, a glittering storm of knives in her fist.†   (source)
  • There was that same look of the predatory bird.†   (source)
  • The predatory bird—he thought of it as the way of this desert.†   (source)
  • The jutting, predatory features were drawn into an intense frown.†   (source)
  • From a snag of rocks across the stream, and not a hundred feet away, came a predatory snarl.†   (source)
  • The effect was a revolting, predatory contrast to his smiles and diplomatic speech.†   (source)
  • Dr. Rasmussen's sharp, predatory face glared down at them from the light of his open doorway.†   (source)
  • I generally spent the class drawing predatory zeppelins and armies of bears in my math notebook.†   (source)
  • Maryse moved closer to the table, her eyes suddenly sharp, almost predatory.†   (source)
  • They are nothing but stuffy, middle-class vulgarians or else predatory savages like Rearden.†   (source)
  • It took all his control to smother a predatory urge that rose up within him.†   (source)
  • "Maybe I'll tag along," Sampson said, grinning like the predatory wolf that he is.†   (source)
  • Seabiscuit stalked him with predatory lunges.†   (source)
  • The mood in the cathedral had turned; adulation had been replaced by something predatory.†   (source)
  • We're laughing when Mrs. Nightwing enters, suspicious and predatory.†   (source)
  • Only the eyes remained, fierce and predatory.†   (source)
  • She saw the way the other dancers looked at him—appreciation, speculation, predatory hunger.†   (source)
  • With a predatory leap, Max was after it, his feet kicking up bits of bark and soil.†   (source)
  • Martin says that the King beating was precisely what one would expect when two parties—both with soaring heartbeats and predatory cardiovascular reactions— encounter each other after a chase.†   (source)
  • The shark, which had seemed only passingly menacing before, now appeared vicious and wholly sentient, the embodiment of the predatory instinct.†   (source)
  • Such sentimen-talism may seem ridiculous considering what I had witnessed in the last days, but those were the deeds of others, of predatory animals.†   (source)
  • Most of the passengers, above all the Europeans, abandoned the pestilential stench of their cabins and spent the night walking the decks, brushing away all sorts of predatory creatures with the same towel they used to dry their incessant perspiration, and at dawn they were exhausted and swollen with bites.†   (source)
  • But the look she gives me reminds me of the look in the attack dog's eyes in the aptitude test—a vicious, predatory stare.†   (source)
  • Instead of the shaggy, triangular head, cocked sideways in a kind of predatory questioning gesture, he saw his teddybear on the taller of the two piles of blankets.†   (source)
  • Her eyes were raisins, beady and dark, and they twitched their way over me in almost predatory evaluation.†   (source)
  • At night, by some chemical process unknown to me but obviously inhibited by sunlight, the predatory algae turned highly acidic and the ponds became vats of acid that digested the fish.†   (source)
  • Perhaps it was because Richard Parker was not familiar with sharks, had never encountered a predatory fish— whatever the case, it happened: an accident, one of those few times when I was reminded that Richard Parker was not perfect, that despite his honed instincts he too could bumble.†   (source)
  • There was woodsmoke in the gray of his eyes, but the face was predatory: thin, full of sharp angles and planes.†   (source)
  • The heat was alive, predatory.†   (source)
  • She clutched at a rock with her free hand as Amatis rolled to her knees, looking around with a predatory grin.†   (source)
  • It was a huge change from, say, Erasers, who mainly showed us how to not be clumsy, predatory idiots.†   (source)
  • Panting, predatory grins leered at him in the moonlight as their bare feet churned up gravel and mud.†   (source)
  • face's father's words were perfectly ordinary, even polite, but there was something in his blank and predatory gaze that made Alec want to step in front of his sister and block her from Valentine's view.†   (source)
  • He had looked at her with desire, but not with this lazy, predatory, consuming look that made her heart pulse unevenly in her chest.†   (source)
  • His lip curled back, and for a moment she saw that predatory light in his eyes again, but now it was mixed with anger.†   (source)
  • He had once procured a mountain lion on short notice because the target of an Office recruitment, an alcoholic prince from a Gulf Arab dynasty, admired predatory cats.†   (source)
  • Smoothing his beard with the flat of a hand, the chief of Durgrimst Knurlcarathn smiled at the assembly, a predatory gleam in his eyes.†   (source)
  • He stalked through the woods feeling powerful and predatory, winding his way through the forest toward the flickering firelight of the clearing.†   (source)
  • Helene and I befriended them in our first week, all of us defending each other as best as we could against our predatory classmates.†   (source)
  • Its light illuminated the demon stalking toward him, its insectile gaze bright and predatory, but all he could see was Alec; Alec falling over the side of the ship, Alec drowning in the black water far below.†   (source)
  • But as they circled one another, Myrmidon's carriage remained proud, his movements poised and predatory.†   (source)
  • Still, there was a predatory swiftness in his gait and a slight outward bend to his legs that suggested speed and agility in his youth, which, thought Bouchard with misplaced arrogance, was quite some time ago.†   (source)
  • He looks pointedly at a knot of silk-clad, bejeweled Illustrian girls lurking near the edges of the tent, some of whom are watching me in a disturbingly predatory way.†   (source)
  • Suddenly she wanted to be covered up in front of him, in front of all that familiarity and beauty and that lovely predatory smile that said he was willing to do whatever with her, to her, no matter who was waiting in the hall.†   (source)
  • His old-fashioned brand of ruthlessness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of profit.†   (source)
  • When he thought of Chinese beauty the iron predatory faces of the Manchus came to his mind, arrogant and unyielding faces of a people who had authority by unquestioned inheritance.†   (source)
  • "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" laughed the powerful porcelain predator.†   (source)
  • Her eyes flashed a dangerous shade of gold, like a feline predator's.†   (source)
  • Have chickens, cows, and pigs traded one set of predators for another?†   (source)
  • But Brian had become part of nature, had become a predator, a two-legged wolf.†   (source)
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meaning too rare to warrant focus:

show 2 examples with meaning too rare to warrant focus
  • That same year, on 30 October, another US Predator hit a madrasa on a hill near the main town of Khar, killing eighty-two people, many of them young boys.   (source)
    predator = a type of  military drone
  • On 17 June 2004 an unmanned Predator dropped a Hellfire missile on Nek Mohammad in South Waziristan, apparently while he was giving an interview by satellite phone.   (source)
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