Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The practice of some savage or barbarous tribes, as the Ottomacs of South America, of using certain kinds of clay for food; geophagism.
  • noun Cachexia Africana, a disorder of the nutritive functions among negroes, and in certain kinds of disturbances of health among women, in which there is a morbid craving to eat dirt.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The story is a continuation and a complete fouling-up of 'Hansel and Gretel'; it contains dirt-eating, largely off-stage homosexual predation (you get to see the preliminaries and the aftermath), audible but not visible heterosexual sex, a witch fondling Hansel's penis, cannibalism, an off-stage axe-murder and beheading of the corpse, and many, many other corpses.

    MIND MELD: Taboo Topics in SF/F Literature 2009

  • "There were no dirt-eating children playing in the area," he writes, "for it was a swamp."

    The Triumph Of The Psycho-Fact 2008

  • To spend $9.3 million to protect non-existent dirt-eating children is what I mean by the problem of the ‘last 10 percent.’

    THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • But there were no dirt-eating children playing in the area, for it was a swamp.

    THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • Nor were dirt-eating children likely to appear there, for future building seemed unlikely.

    The Commanding Heights DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • To spend $9.3 million to protect non-existent dirt-eating

    The Commanding Heights DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • Nor were dirt-eating children likely to appear there, for future building seemed unlikely.

    THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • But there were no dirt-eating children playing in the area, for it was a swamp.

    The Commanding Heights DANIEL YERGIN 1998

  • Vicki managed to work up another dirt-eating smile.

    Devil's Waltz Kellerman, Jonathan 1992

  • He, too, advocated secession as a right and a duty -- separation, now and forever from the dirt-eating, money-loving Yankees, who, he was ashamed to say, had the same ancestry, and worshiped the same God as himself.

    The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862 Various

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