arsenicophagy
arsenicophagy noun: the eating of arsenic, formerly practiced for supposed health benefits.
Noun
arsenicophagy (uncountable)
- The eating of arsenic, formerly practiced for supposed health benefits.
- M. Ritter adds that in his experiments with men, he never met with the coloring and embonpoint which are said to result from arsenicophagy.1873, Chandler and Chandler, The American Chemist, page 204
- She took up arsenicophagy, and in just a few months, 'had become stout, rosy-cheeked, and altogether quite to her lover's satisfaction'.2010, James C. Whorton, The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play, OUP
Origin of arsenicophagy
From arsenic + -o- + -phagy.
Questions about arsenicophagy
- What does arsenicophagy mean?
- Arsenicophagy means the eating of arsenic, formerly practiced for supposed health benefits.
- What part of speech is arsenicophagy?
- Arsenicophagy is a noun.
Words near arsenicophagy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: arsenicophagy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “arsenicophagy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arsenicophagy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.