CANNIBALISM

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does cannibalism mean? 

• CANNIBALISM (noun)
  The noun CANNIBALISM has 1 sense:

1. the practice of eating the flesh of your own kind

  Familiarity information: CANNIBALISM used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CANNIBALISM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The practice of eating the flesh of your own kind

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("cannibalism" is a kind of...):

pattern; practice (a customary way of operation or behavior)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "cannibalism"):

anthropophagy (human cannibalism; the eating of human flesh)

Derivation:

cannibalistic (characteristic of cannibals or exhibiting cannibalism)

 Context examples 

In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by cannibalism.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He drew up lists of the most incongruous things and was unhappy until he succeeded in establishing kinship between them all—kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire, rattlesnakes, rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring of lions, illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums, and tobacco.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)