break-bones en · NOUN
Etymology
From break + bones, calque of Spanish quebrantahuesos.
Meanings
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Any bird in the genus Macronectes, known as giant petrels.
These southern seas are frequented by several species of Petrels: the largest kind, Procellaria gigantea, or nelly (quebrantahuesos, or break-bones, of the Spaniards), is a common bird, both in the inland channels and on the open sea. In its habits and manner of flight, there is a very close resemblance with the albatross; and as with the albatross, a person may watch it for hours together without seeing on what it feeds. The "break-bones" is, however, a rapacious bird, for it was observed by some of the officers at Port St. Antonio chasing a diver, which tried to escape by diving and flying, but was continually struck down, and at last killed by a blow on its head.
1839, Charles Darwin, chapter 13, in The Voyage of the Beagle, volume 29, New York: P. F. Collier & Son, published 1909:The titlark, sheath-bill, teal, and goose of South Georgia are wholly or in part vegetable feeders. The cormorant and the tern eat fish. The gull subsists chiefly on limpets and other shell-bearing mollusks. The penguins and Tubinares capture cuttlefish and pelagic crustaceans, the giant petrel, or "breakbones," alone obtaining part of its food on shore, since it has a relish for carrion. The skua feeds on any kind of animal food, dead or alive, especially upon other birds and their eggs.
1922 April 14, Robert Cushman Murphy, “South Georgia, An Outpost of the Antarctic”, in National Geographic, volume 41, number 4, page 429:Whilst we were at work on the beach, crowds of birds began to assemble, especially the Giant Petrel or "Breakbones" (Ossifraga gigantea), the "Nelly" or "Stinker" of sealers. This bird in its habits is most remarkably like the vulture.
1879, Henry Mottidge Moseley, “Kerguelen's Land”, in Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger, Cambridge University Press, published 2014, →ISBN, pages 205–206:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| break-bones | Number=Plur | lexicographic | |
| breakbones | alternative | lexicographic |