Word.ws English Dictionary

melanophagy

melanophagy noun: the loss (by "eating away") of melanin.

Noun

melanophagy (uncountable)

  1. The loss (by "eating away") of melanin
    • Melanin-bearing keratinocytes are more in number in the epidermal type; phagocytes with melanophagy in the papillary dermis characterize the dermal type of melasma.2004, V. Krishna, Textbook of Pathology, page 1055
    • Only some eye defects were reported, including iris synechiae, melanophagy in the iris or the ciliary body ...2020, Johanna Escoubet et al, "ABHD11, a new diacylglycerol lipase involved in weight gain regulation" in PLOS 1

Origin of melanophagy

From melano- + -phagy.

Questions about melanophagy

What does melanophagy mean?
Melanophagy means the loss (by "eating away") of melanin.
What part of speech is melanophagy?
Melanophagy is a noun.

Words near melanophagy in the dictionary

  1. melanophage
  2. melanophages
  3. melanophagic
  4. melanophagosome
  5. melanophagosomes
  6. melanophagy
  7. melanophilin
  8. melanophlogite
  9. melanophlogites
  10. melanophobia
  11. melanophore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: melanophagy (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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