How to Use harpy in a Sentence

harpy

noun
  • Think a front desk hewn from Dionysos marble and sconces in the shape of harpies.
    — Sam Cochran, Architectural Digest, 11 Aug. 2025
  • Start out with helpless sheep and move your way up to helpless goblins and harpies.
    — Loresjoberg, WIRED, 18 Jan. 2007
  • But maybe these women aren’t evil vixens or cold-hearted harpies.
    — Andrea Bartz, Marie Claire, 25 Feb. 2019
  • Harpies evolved to exploit exactly that gap.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026
  • Alice Glass is a ghostly presence, a shrieking harpy that'll rip your soul or your body.
    — Kat Bein, Billboard, 26 Oct. 2017
  • Katzner is an experienced bird handler and one of two working with the harpy.
    — Dana Oland, idahostatesman, 12 Mar. 2018
  • There are fairies and nymphs, unicorns, harpies, giants, ogres, trolls, Gollums and dragons.
    — Patti Restivo, baltimoresun.com, 14 June 2019
  • One is that late-night Oval Office scene with Amy, which casts Selina as the harpy.
    — Jen Chaney, New York Times, 29 May 2016
  • Like most eagles, the aviary says the female harpy is significantly larger than the male — sometimes twice the size.
    — Madeline Bartos, CBS News, 28 May 2026
  • Others portrayed her as a harpy, a notoriously disagreeable mythical beast that was half bird-of-prey, half woman.
    — The Economist, 9 Nov. 2019
  • In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets.
    — Michelle Goldberg, Mercury News, 20 Jan. 2026
  • The monkey struggled, yet the eagle maintained its grip throughout the attack; after just a few seconds, the harpy flew off carrying the adult in its talons, now deceased.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026
  • About the harpy Harpy eagles are native to Panama’s Darien Gap, a 4 million acre swath of roadless rainforest.
    — Dana Oland, idahostatesman, 12 Mar. 2018
  • Those kinds of sentiments have multiplied on social media, which has exploded with memes in recent days calling the four everything from terrorists to harpies to cancer.
    — Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times, 27 July 2019
  • And because harpies rely on large emergent trees for nesting and an extensive, continuous canopy for hunting, even partial deforestation will severely disrupt their ability to breed and forage.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026
  • Unlike the open-country eagles many people picture soaring over cliffs or plains, harpies inhabit dense rainforests where visibility is limited, branches are tangled and maneuverability matters more than endurance.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'harpy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: