Word.ws English Dictionary

autophage

autophage noun: one who or that which eats itself.

Noun

autophage (plural autophages)

  1. One who or that which eats itself.
    • Racism's link to the franchise makes democracy an autophage that threatens to eat itself because citizens generally become anxious about losing their right to vote.2023, Adebowale Akande, Politics Between Nations: Power, Peace, and Diplomacy, page 30
  2. A rocket that consumes parts of its own structure as fuel.

Forms of autophage

pluralautophages

Origin of autophage

From auto- + -phage.

Questions about autophage

What does autophage mean?
Autophage means one who or that which eats itself.
What part of speech is autophage?
Autophage is a noun.
What is the plural of autophage?
The plural of autophage is autophages.

Words near autophage in the dictionary

  1. autoperpetuating
  2. autoperpetuation
  3. autoperpetuations
  4. autophagal
  5. autophagasome
  6. autophage
  7. autophages
  8. autophagi
  9. autophagia
  10. autophagic
  11. autophagical

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: autophage (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: “autophage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/autophage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.