Word.ws English Dictionary

matriphagy

matriphagy noun: the condition where organisms feed on their own mother.

Noun

matriphagy (uncountable)

  1. The condition where organisms feed on their own mother.
    • As we discover in Parenthood, the mother spider gives her life for her spiderlings, who, when the time is right, slowly but surely creep up on her and their other elderly relatives en masse and eat them alive... making room for the new generation.
      Known as matriphagy, for director Jeff Wilson this...2025 August 3, Paul Glynn, “Attenborough gives 'family feels' in new show Parenthood”, in BBC News

Origin of matriphagy

From matri- (“mother”) + -phagy (“to feed on”).

Words formed from matriphagy

Questions about matriphagy

What does matriphagy mean?
Matriphagy means the condition where organisms feed on their own mother.
What part of speech is matriphagy?
Matriphagy is a noun.

Words near matriphagy in the dictionary

  1. matriot
  2. matriotic
  3. matriotism
  4. matriots
  5. matriphagous
  6. matriphagy
  7. matripotestal
  8. matriptase
  9. matriptases
  10. matrisexual
  11. matrisexuality

Source and license

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