harrier
noun
Simple meaning
Hawks that hunt over meadows and marshes and prey on small terrestrial animals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hehreeerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɛɹiɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Hawks that hunt over meadows and marshes and prey on small terrestrial animals
A kind of dog used to hunt hares; a harehound.
A runner, specifically, a cross country runner.
Any of several birds of prey in the genus Circus of the subfamily Circinae which fly low over meadows and marshes and hunt small mammals or birds.
A medium-sized dog breed of the hound class, used for hunting hares by trailing them.
One who harries.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Hawks that hunt over meadows and marshes and prey on small terrestrial animals
Used this way, harrier is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Mild
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Any of numerous large Old World hawks intermediate in some respects between typical hawks and typical eagles.
Common harrier of North America and Europe.
Old World harrier frequenting marshy regions.
Brownish European harrier.
Common harrier of North America and Europe.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.