We have been hearing a lot, recently, about various human phagias & associated phobias.
First there was the horsemeat scandal; a post on the Wellcome Trust blog introduced me to the word hippophagy, a fancy word to describe the eating of horsemeat.
This morning Erica McAlister presented a programme on BBC Radio 4 designed to persuade us all to indulge in more entomophagy – the eating of insects. We already do more of that than we know about.
Suddenly it hit me – if -phagy means ‘eating’ what on earth is a sarcophagus? This is a word I have only ever heard used in connection with the burial of human bodies. The original meaning hardly bears thinking about.
Time for some etymology.
According to the OED, phagia comes from the Ancient Greek word for eating, & is used to form scientific terms denoting conditions related to eating or ingestion.
-phagy is used to form nouns with the sense ‘that feeds on, or in the manner denoted or described by (the first element)’. It appeared in English during the 1600s, but the Victorians added plenty more varieties to the list.
A sarcophagus was originally a kind of stone, reputed among the Greeks to have the property of consuming the flesh of any dead body (not just a human one) deposited in it; this meaning is now described as Obsolete in everyday use by the OED. Sarcophagus as a word to mean any kind of stone coffin appeared first in 1705.
The OED also records sarcophagy as a word used to describe the eating of any kind of flesh, but quotes nothing more recent than what sounds like a splendid rant from HG Wells in 1901: “The movements against vivisection, opium, alcohol, tobacco, sarcophagy, and the male sex”.
If you like you could become ophiophagous (eat snakes).
But do try to curb your pamphagous behaviour. The OED defines this ‘All-devouring, omnivorous’ but has only one quotation to illustrate its use, dating from 1702: “He ... eat with such a Pamphagous Fury, as to Cram himself with ... Eighteen Biskets at one Stolen Meal”.
Sounds plain greedy to me.
Links
Wellcome Trust: Flogging a dead horse
BBC Radio 4: Who’s a pest
