carnivorous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin carnivorus (“flesh-eating”),^[2][3][4][5] with the ending assimilated to -ous.^[4] The Latin adjective is formed from carō (“flesh, genitive carnis”) and vorō (“to devour”),^[2][3][6] through the combining form -vorus.^[4][5] Etymonline takes the first part from Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to cut”), flesh being originally "a piece of flesh", and the second from Proto-Indo-European *gwora- (“food, devouring”).^[2] Barnhart suggests that the Latin word was possibly a loan translation of Ancient Greek σαρκοβόρος (sarkobóros, “flesh-eating”), and that the English use was patterned on carnivora, which it records from 1627, in Bacon's “Natural History”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Feeding on flesh: 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.^[4][3] Etymonline and Dictionary.com agree on the 1640s,^[2][7] but Merriam-Webster's Collegiate gives 1592, and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English the late 16th century.^[8][9][10]

Semantic evolution

The word first described animals that naturally prey on others, and it came to name specifically the order Carnivora.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it as flesh-eating, "that of which flesh is the proper food", quoting Ray on birds and Arbuthnot's claim that man "is by his frame, as well as his appetite, a carnivorous animal".^[11] Botany took it up in the 19th century for plants that digest animal matter, from 1868 in the OED,^[4][9] and medicine used it for caustics that destroy flesh, from 1881.^[4] Modern dictionaries also record a figurative use, of aggressively ambitious or predatory people and behaviour.^[6][5]

Timeline

• 1646 – eating or feeding on flesh.^[4][3] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dates the word to 1592.^[8]
• 1868 – of plants, absorbing and digesting animal substances.^[4][9]
• 1881 – of caustics, destroying flesh.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Feeding on flesh or other animal tissue: Most sharks are carnivorous hunters.^{[6][12][5][4]}
2. Of a plant, able to trap small animals and absorb nutrients from them, as a sundew or pitcher plant does.^{[6][12][5][4]}
3. Of or relating to the Carnivora or to carnivores.^[6][12][5]
4. Aggressively ambitious, or predatory in behaviour: a carnivorous style of corporate takeover.^[6][5]

Word family

• carnivorously
• carnivorousness
• carnivory
• carnivorism
• noncarnivorous
• uncarnivorous

Related words

• carnivore
• carnal
• voracious
• devour
• herbivorous
• omnivorous

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster