Poluphagia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An excessive or insatiable appetite for food, often leading to voracious eating habits
2. A condition characterized by an overwhelming desire to consume large quantities of food
3. The phenomenon of indulging in gluttony and overconsumption, reflecting an extreme enjoyment of eating

Etymology: Poluphagia is a medical coinage built entirely from Greek parts: "polys" meaning "much" or "many," and "phagein," "to eat." Its sense of an abnormal, excessive hunger reflects the way physicians of the modern era grouped appetite disorders under Greek-derived names. The word belongs to the same family as "polyphagia," "many-eating," and "aphagia," the loss of the ability to swallow, which together show how Greek roots were used to name bodily conditions. The Greek sources themselves do not contain the medical term. Ancient writers spoke of hunger and gluttony, but the specific compound was assembled later, when scientific writers drew freely on classical vocabulary to name conditions they wanted to distinguish precisely. The exact date of its first appearance in English is uncertain, so it is safest to say it is a learned modern formation rather than a word inherited from antiquity.

Synonyms: polyphagia, excessive eating, overeating, hyperphagia

Antonyms: anorexia, hypophagia, undereating