[U,sing.]
1 an animal, a bird, etc. that is hunted, killed and eaten by another:
The lion will often stalk its prey for hours. * birds of prey (= birds that kill for food)
2 a person who is harmed or deceived by sb, especially for dishonest purposes:
Elderly people are easy prey for dishonest salesmen.
IDIOMS
be / fall prey to sth (formal)
1 (of an animal) to be killed and eaten by another animal or bird:
Many small birds and rodents fall prey to the domestic cat.
2 (of a person) to be harmed or affected by sth bad:
Since the attack, she had fallen prey to irrational fears.
Part of speech: verb
IDIOMS
prey on sb's mind (of a thought, problem, etc.) to make sb think and worry about it all the time:
The thought that he could have helped more preyed on his mind.
PHRASALVERBS
prey on / upon sb/sth
1 (of an animal or a bird) to hunt and kill another animal for food:
Hawks prey on rodents and small birds.
2 to harm sb who is weaker than you, or make use of them in a dishonest way to get what you want:
Bogus social workers have been preying on old people living alone.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for prey is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is prey a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, prey is tagged as noun.
Does prey appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — prey appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
