Algophagy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of eating substances that provoke pain reflects an atypical dietary practice
2. A distinctive habit consists of ingesting items that generate physical suffering
3. The consumption of food that is capable of inducing pain represents an unusual eating behavior

Etymology: The term is a modern scientific coinage built from two Greek elements: "algos," meaning pain, and "phagein," meaning to eat. Ancient Greeks had no such word. It belongs to the same family as "geophagy" (eating earth) and "coprophagy" (eating feces), with the suffix "-phagy" marking a habit of eating a particular kind of thing. The first portion, "algo-," appears in other modern pain terms such as "algesia," the sensitivity to pain, which shows how it was assembled from classical parts to name a clinical or behavioral pattern. The Greek roots make the meaning transparent, so the word's notable feature is its precision. It names a specific compulsion, the deliberate ingestion of harmful or painful substances, rather than a general appetite for unusual food. I am not certain of the exact date or author of its earliest recorded use, so that detail is best checked in a dictionary of medical or psychological terminology.