Word.ws English Dictionary

cachexia Africana

cachexia Africana noun: a morbid impulse to eat dirt.

Noun

cachexia Africana (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) A morbid impulse to eat dirt.
    • Cachexia Africana referred to blacks' supposed propensity for eating nonfood substances such as clay, chalk, and dirt.2008, Harriet A. Washington, “Southern Discomfort”, in Medical Apartheid, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 52

Origin of cachexia Africana

It was encountered among native Africans.

Questions about cachexia Africana

What does cachexia Africana mean?
Cachexia Africana means a morbid impulse to eat dirt.
What part of speech is cachexia Africana?
Cachexia Africana is a noun.

Words near cachexia Africana in the dictionary

  1. cachets
  2. cachette
  3. cachettes
  4. Cacheu
  5. cachexia
  6. cachexia Africana
  7. cachexiae
  8. cachexias
  9. cachexic
  10. cachexies
  11. cachexin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cachexia Africana (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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