cannibalism

From cannibal +‎ -ism.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkanɪbəlɪz(ə)m/

• Audio (US):

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cannibalism (usually uncountable, plural cannibalisms)

1. The act of eating another of one's own species.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 31:

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

   • 2022 August 23, Deborah L. Nichols, Patricia L. Crown, “9 Devouring Ourselves George J Armelagos”, in Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest‎^[1], University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 218:

     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”

2. (figurative) An act in which one thing consumes or takes over another of the same kind.
3. (linguistics) In speech, the occurrence of one word eliding part or all of the next word, because the syllables are the same. For example, "Look, an MIT shirt" for "Look, an MIT T-shirt".

• kuru
• mad cow disease
• prion
• anthropophagy

• cannibalism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia