anthropophaginian

English

Noun

anthropophaginian (plural anthropophaginians)

1. (rare, humorous) One who eats human flesh.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v]:

     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.