Meanings
plural anthropophaginians
- humorousrareOne who eats human flesh.
Host: […] go, knock / and call: hee’l speake like an Anthropophaginian vnto / thee: Knocke I say.
c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v]2 more examples
The awful distich put into the mouth of the Jette or Ettin, the principal agent in this romance, 'Snouk but, snouk ben, I find the smell of earthly men,” is scarcely inferior to the 'fee faw fum' of the keen-scented anthropophaginian of the other.
1819, The Quarterly Review, page 106Packer is not yet hung, up to the time of this writing, but his case is hanging in the Supreme Court of this State, where it is likely to bide the law's delay for a long time yet, while Packer, the great American anthropophaginian, suffers the pangs of dread uncertainty in durance vile.
1884, Alice Polk Hill, Tales of the Colorado Pioneers
Cite this entry
anthropophaginian. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anthropophaginian
“anthropophaginian.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anthropophaginian. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “anthropophaginian,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/anthropophaginian.
Source: anthropophaginian on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.