shrike

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various carnivorous oscine birds of the family Laniidae, having a screeching call and a strong hooked bill with a toothlike projection and often impaling its prey on sharp-pointed thorns or barbs of wire fencing.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An obsolete form of shriek.
2. n. A dentirostral oscine passerine bird of the family Laniidæ, having a notably strong hooked and toothed bill, and of actively predaceous nature; a butcher-bird; a nine-killer; a Wood-chat. The species are very numerous, and are found in most parts of the world. The most characteristic habit of these birds—at least of those of the genus Lanius and of some allied genera—is to catch and kill more insects, small birds, and small quadrupeds than they devour at once, and to impale these victims on a thorn or sharp twig. The great gray or cinereous shrike of Europe is Lanius excubitor, of which the corresponding American species is the northern butcher-bird, L. borealis. The loggerhead shrike of the United States is L. ludovicianus. The red-backed shrike of Europe is Lanius or Enneoclonus callurio (see wood-chat). See cuts under butcherbird, Lanius, and Pachycephala.
3. n. One of many different birds that resemble shrikes, or were held to belong to the genus Lanius. This was a Linnean genus, of amplitude and elasticity, and all the birds that were put in it used to be recorded in the books as shrikes of some sort, whence many English phrase-names, now practically obsolete except in some hyphenated compounds. Among these birds were various thrushes, ant-thrushes of both worlds, flycatchers, starlings, etc. See phrases below, and bush-shrike, drongo-shrike, swallow-shrike, Artamidæ, Dicruridæ, and Thamnophilinæ.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any of various passerine birds of the family Laniidae which are known for their habit of catching other birds and small animals and impaling the uneaten portions of their bodies on thorns.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of oscinine birds of the family Laniidæ, having a strong hooked bill, toothed at the tip. Most shrikes are insectivorous, but the common European gray shrike (Lanius excubitor), the great northern shrike (L. borealis), and several others, kill mice, small birds, etc., and often impale them on thorns, and are, on that account called also butcher birds. See under butcher.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any of numerous Old World birds having a strong hooked bill that feed on smaller animals