Pantophagous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Feeding on a wide variety of foods, both plant and animal, without being restricted to one type
2. Having an appetite that accepts nearly every kind of food, from vegetation to flesh
3. Describing an organism that consumes almost any substance it can take in as nourishment

Etymology: "Pantophagous" is built from two Greek elements: "pan" meaning "all" and "phagos" meaning "eating" or "eater," the same root that gives English words like "phagocyte" and "anthropophagi." Put together, it describes something that eats everything, with no particular diet in mind. The adjective is a compound formed in English from these classical parts, a straightforward piece of word-building rather than a word that travelled down through centuries of speech. Its form follows the pattern of other "-phagous" adjectives, such as "omnivorous" in meaning, though "pantophagous" stresses the indiscriminate appetite more bluntly than its Latin-derived near-synonym.

Synonyms: omnivorous, pantophagic

Antonyms: monophagous, herbivorous, carnivorous