thrasher

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  brown thrasher
• WordNet 3.6
  • n thrasher large pelagic shark of warm seas with a whiplike tail used to round up small fish on which to feed
  • n thrasher thrush-like American songbird able to mimic other birdsongs
  • n thrasher a farm machine for separating seeds or grain from the husks and straw
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Additional illustrations & photos:

Sickle-billed thrasher

Thrashers' Road Engine

• • Thrasher (Zoöl) A large and voracious shark (Alopias vulpes), remarkable for the great length of the upper lobe of its tail, with which it beats, or thrashes, its prey. It is found both upon the American and the European coasts. Called also fox shark sea ape sea fox slasher swingle-tail, and thrasher shark.
  • Thrasher (Zoöl) A name given to the brown thrush and other allied species. See Brown thrush.
  • Thrasher One who, or that which, thrashes grain; a thrashing machine.
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• • n thrasher See thresher.
  • n thrasher A kind of throstle or thrush; specifically, in the United States, a thrushlike bird of the genus Harporhynchus, of which there are numerous species, related to the mocking-bird, and less nearly to the birds commonly called thrushes. The best-known, and the only one found in the greater part of the United States, is H. rufus, the brown thrush or brown thrasher, also called sandy mocking-bird from its color and shape and power of mimicry, in which latter respect it approaches the true mocker, Mimus polyglottus. Its proper song, heard only from the male and in the breeding-season, is loud, rich, skilfully modulated, and well sustained. This bird is very common in shrubbery and undergrowth, especially southward. It is bright rufous above, nearly uniform; below whitish shaded with pale flaxen-brown or cinnamon, and heavily marked with chains of dark-brown streaks, the throat immaculate, with a necklace of oval spots. The length is about 11 inches, the extent only 13 or 14, as the tail is long and the wings are short. It builds in a bush, occasionally on the ground, a bulky nest of twigs, leaves, bark-strips, and rootlets, and lays from four to six eggs, whitish or greenish, profusely speckled with brown, about an inch long and ¾ inch broad. A similar but darker-colored thrasher is H. longirostris of Texas. In New Mexico, Arizona, and California there are several others, showing great variation in the length and curvature of the bill, and quite different in color from the common thrasher. Such are the curve-billed, H. curvirostris; the bow-billed, H. c. palmeri; the Arizona, H. bendirei; the St. Lucas, H. cinereus of Lower California; the California, H. redivivus; the Yuma, H. lecontei; and the crissal, H. crissalis—all found over the Mexican border.
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• • n Thrasher thrash′ėr an American throstle or thrush, the brown thrush or sandy mocking-bird
  • Thrasher Also Thresh′er
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