cannibalism

plural cannibalisms

1. uncountableusuallyThe act of eating another of one's own species.

   Cannibalism does not openly figure amongst aboriginal misdeeds, but in the northern part of Queensland it is no uncommon vice.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 31

   2 more examples

   Evidence for cannibalism abounds - even if circumstantial - both from the modern world and throughout history, but academic anthropology has found itself in a funk of denial. […] Considered globally, cannibalism should be less a moral issue than one of custom. I like Marmite, but then I have been raised on the stuff.

   2000 September 7, Henry Gee, “Eating people - is it bad taste?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 09 May 2014

   HuFu and was promoting it as “the healthy human flesh alternative!” Mark Nuckols, inventor of HuFu, says, “I have to admit that I myself have never sampled human flesh. . . . However, I've done quite a bit of research on the history and anthropology of cannibalism and read enough accounts to have come up with a fairly good approximation”

   2022 August 23, Deborah L. Nichols, Patricia L. Crown, “9 Devouring Ourselves George J Armelagos”, in Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest, University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 218

2. figurativelyuncountableusuallyAn act in which one thing consumes or takes over another of the same kind.
3. uncountableusuallyThe salvaging of parts from one thing, such as a machine, for use in another.
4. uncountableusuallyhuman sciencesIn speech, the occurrence of one word eliding part or all of the next word, because the syllables are the same.