Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The eating of men; the act or practice of eating human flesh; cannibalism.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The eating of human flesh; cannibalism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The eating of human flesh; cannibalism.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun human cannibalism; the eating of human flesh

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From anthropo- + -phagy.

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Examples

  • This is called anthropophagy or cannibalism, and is a time-honored custom among some of the tribes of Africa.

    Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine 1896

  • This is called anthropophagy or cannibalism, and is a time-honored custom among some of the tribes of Africa.

    Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine 1896

  • There's an easier word for "anthropophagy," but the practice is every bit as disgusting whatever it's called, right?

    Readthehook.com - Current Articles 2009

  • The distinctive cultural trace of Brazil is anthropophagy -- from culture to technology, the legacy of a former, lazy European monarchy in a tropical country where the aborigines, after banqueting over the odd whitey, were merrily exterminated while Europeans and black slaves copulated freely, with no Catholic guilt involved (there's no sin below the Equator).

    Pepe Escobar: Is Brazil the New United States? Pepe Escobar 2010

  • The intermingling performed by the act of anthropophagy, and the intersection of the past and present that occurs in the building of cultural identity, suggests that the time of this “meal” is, to borrow a phrase, “out of joint.”

    Archive 2008-02-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • The intermingling performed by the act of anthropophagy, and the intersection of the past and present that occurs in the building of cultural identity, suggests that the time of this “meal” is, to borrow a phrase, “out of joint.”

    Fragments Shattered by History Mary Kate Hurley 2008

  • We need you to lead the courageous charge against these anti-Irish, pro-anthropophagy institutions!

    Is Rush Limbaugh really that hard to understand? Ann Althouse 2009

  • Western European “explorers” annihilated millions of indigenous people in the “New World” under the pretext that they practiced anthropophagy and were better off dead or enslaved than they were living in their natural “uncivilized” state.

    Flesh, flesh everywhere, Nor any morsel to eat... 2009

  • Good grief, just how much household anthropophagy has been going on while we've been discussing the war in Iraq and the weather?

    Archive 2007-03-01 2007

  • Odyssey at a distance of some six centuries; and in the interval it is extremely likely that anthropophagy had become rarer among the Greeks, and that if they still continued to be cooking animals, they were relinquishing the practice of cooking one another.

    Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine 2006

Comments

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  • "'But, Stephen,' said Jack, glancing towards the wreck of the Norfolk, 'think what they must have been feeding on.'

    "'Never let us be missish, my dear: all earthly plants to some degree partake of the countless dead since Adam's time, and all the fishes of the sea share at first or second or hundredth hand in all the drowned. In any case,' he added, seeing Jack's look of distaste, 'sharks are very like robins, you know; they defend their territory with equal jealousy, and if we take ours over by the far channel no one will be able to reproach us with anthropophagy, even at one remove.'"

    —Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 391

    February 23, 2008