Word.ws English Dictionary

maneater

maneater is the alternative spelling of man-eater.

Meaning of man-eater

Noun

man-eater (plural man-eaters)

  1. An animal that attacks and kills humans for food, such as certain tigers or sharks; any animal that consumes human flesh.
    • And particularly, he knows where to find the primitive substance of the man eater: howsoever evaporate or reduced, as it were, into air or vapour, by sweat or perspiration.1776, Thomas Boston, The Human Nature in its Fourfold State, page 336
  2. A carnivorous plant large enough to consume a human; a man-eating plant.
  3. A cannibal; a human that eats other humans.
    • For how a race of Man-eaters should spring up in these islands, when none of the nations on the continents from whence they must derive their original are charged with these savage customs, is not easy to conceive[.]1724, Thomas Salmon, Modern History, Or, The Present State of All Nations, page 287
  4. (broadly, slang) A seductive dangerous woman, often readily taking and discarding male romantic partners.
    • "That only proves she has affairs with them too. She's a man-eater."1945, Norman Lindsay, The Cousin from Fiji, page 233

Forms of maneater

pluralmaneaters

Questions about maneater

What is maneater the alternative spelling of?
Maneater is the alternative spelling of man-eater.

Words near maneater in the dictionary

  1. mane-combs
  2. Manea
  3. maneaba
  4. maneabas
  5. maneapas
  6. maneater
  7. maneaters
  8. maneating
  9. maneb
  10. manebs
  11. maned

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: maneater (page history and authors); man-eater (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: “maneater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/maneater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.