Everyday LifeGreek → English
Anthropophagy
/ˌænθrəˈpɒfədʒi/noun
The eating of human flesh by humans.
The Greek roots
ἄνθρωπος
ánthrōpos
human being
φαγεῖν
phageîn
to eat
Literally: “human eating”
The story of the word
Cannibal came from the Caribs, anthropophagy from the Greeks, and the two words split the work between a place and a description. Herodotus set a tribe he called the Ἀνδροφάγοι north of Scythia and said flatly that they alone in that region ate human flesh. English borrowed the Greek compound in the seventeenth century, largely for the distance it puts between the speaker and the subject.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
sarcophagusoesophagusphagocyteanthropology
In a sentence
The chapter on anthropophagy is careful to separate what was observed from what was alleged by rivals.
Accusations of anthropophagy travelled ahead of every colonial expedition.