VAMPIRE
\vˈampa͡ɪ͡ə], \vˈampaɪə], \v_ˈa_m_p_aɪə]\
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Either one of two or more species of South American blood-sucking bats belonging to the genera Desmodus and Diphylla. These bats are destitute of molar teeth, but have strong, sharp cutting incisors with which they make punctured wounds from which they suck the blood of horses, cattle, and other animals, as well as man, chiefly during sleep. They have a caecal appendage to the stomach, in which the blood with which they gorge themselves is stored.
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Any one of several species of harmless tropical American bats of the genus Vampyrus, especially V. spectrum. These bats feed upon insects and fruit, but were formerly erroneously supposed to suck the blood of man and animals. Called also false vampire.
By Oddity Software
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Either one of two or more species of South American blood-sucking bats belonging to the genera Desmodus and Diphylla. These bats are destitute of molar teeth, but have strong, sharp cutting incisors with which they make punctured wounds from which they suck the blood of horses, cattle, and other animals, as well as man, chiefly during sleep. They have a caecal appendage to the stomach, in which the blood with which they gorge themselves is stored.
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Any one of several species of harmless tropical American bats of the genus Vampyrus, especially V. spectrum. These bats feed upon insects and fruit, but were formerly erroneously supposed to suck the blood of man and animals. Called also false vampire.
By Noah Webster.
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In superstition, a ghost supposed to suck the blood of sleeping persons; one who preys on, or makes a living at the expense of, others, especially a woman of this sort; a kind of bat supposed to suck blood.
By William Dodge Lewis, Edgar Arthur Singer
By William Hand Browne, Samuel Stehman Haldeman
By James Champlin Fernald
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n. [German Dutch] A dead person superstitiously believed to return from the other world, and to wander about the earth doing every kind of mischief to the living, and to suck the blood of person asleep hence, one who lives by preying on others; an extortioner ; — a large species of bat found in Vampire Sat. tropical America.