Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several large, widely distributed marine diving birds of the genus Phalacrocorax, having dark plumage, webbed feet, and a slender hooked bill.
  • noun A greedy, rapacious person.
  • adjective Greedy; rapacious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A large totipalmate swimming and diving bird of the family Phalacrocoracidæ (which see for technical characters).
  • noun A greedy fellow; a glutton.
  • noun A very avaricious person; a miser; a curmudgeon.
  • Having the qualities of a cormorant; greedy; rapacious; insatiable.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) Any species of Phalacrocorax, a genus of sea birds having a sac under the beak; the shag. Cormorants devour fish voraciously, and have become the emblem of gluttony. They are generally black, and hence are called sea ravens, and coalgeese.
  • noun A voracious eater; a glutton, or gluttonous servant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of various medium-large black seabirds of the family Phalacrocoracidae, especially the great cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo.
  • noun A voracious eater; a glutton.
  • adjective Ravenous, greedy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun large voracious dark-colored long-necked seabird with a distensible pouch for holding fish; used in Asia to catch fish

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English cormoraunt, from Old French cormorant : probably corp, raven; see corbel + *marenc, of the sea (later attested in dialectal French (Sark) pie marange, oystercatcher, literally magpie of the sea, and ultimately from Latin mare, sea; see mori- in Indo-European roots), perhaps influenced by Breton mor, sea (as in morvran, cormorant, literally raven of the sea).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French cormaran (modern cormoran), from mediaeval Latin corvus marinus ‘sea-raven’.

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Examples

Comments

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  • 2. A gluttonous, greedy, or rapacious person. (from Dictionary.com)

    March 17, 2009

  • Unfair to cormorants!

    March 17, 2009

  • lol; maybe you're right, reesetee...Don't look at me, though! It was dictionary.com, I tell you! (They're prejudice against Phalacrocoracidae).

    March 17, 2009

  • Oh, don't worry--I wasn't directing that comment at you, Jingle. :-)

    March 17, 2009

  • one of Gargantua's experimental wipebreeches

    May 21, 2009

  • See brongie.

    May 10, 2011