Omnivory

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɒmˈnɪvəɹi/

Definitions

1. The nutritional habit of engaging in the consumption of both animal and plant sources for sustenance
2. The feeding strategy involving the intake of a wide variety of food types, encompassing both vegetation and animal life
3. A dietary pattern characterized by an organism's ability to consume and derive nutrition from both plant and animal origins

Etymology: The core of "omnivory" is the Latin verb "vorare," meaning "to devour" or "to swallow whole." That same verb sits inside "voracious" and "carnivore," so the word is built on greed rather than neutral eating. The "omni-" prefix comes from Latin "omnis," meaning "all," which makes the word a promise of everything rather than a mix of two things. English took the adjective "omnivorous" from the Latin "omnivorus," and the noun was formed from it by adding "-y," a suffix that turns a quality into the name of a practice. The result is a word for a feeding strategy that names the appetite before the diet.

Synonyms: omnivorousness, variety, diversity, eclecticism, multifariousness