Harpies (2 syl.)

Vultures with the head and breasts of a woman, very fierce and loathsome, living in an atmosphere of filth and stench, and contaminating everything which they came near. Homer mentions but one harpy. Heʹsiod gives two, and later writers three. The names indicate that these monsters were personifications of whirlwinds and storms. Their names were Ocypʹeta (rapid), Celeʹno (blackness), and Aëllʹo (storm). (Greek harpuiai, verb harpāzo, to seize; Latin harpyia. See Virgil: Æneid, iii. 219, etc.).