anthropophaginian

anthropophaginian

English

Noun

anthropophaginian (plural anthropophaginians)

1. (rare, humorous) One who eats human flesh.
   • a. 1602, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 5:

     Host: […] go, knock / and call: hee’l speake like an Anthropophaginian vnto / thee: Knocke I say.

   • 1819, The Quarterly Review, page 106

     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.

   • 1884, Alice Polk Hill, Tales of the Colorado Pioneers

     Packer 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.