• crudivore •
Pronunciation: kru-dê-vor • Hear it!Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: You have to watch the pronunciation of this word to avoid implying that someone is an eater of crud. That is not what a crudivore is: a crudivore is someone who eats only raw food.
Notes: Although this funny word is just creeping into English, and even though it refers to an eating fad, wider applications can be imagined: "Most species are crudivores, so what is the word for a species that eats cooked food?" Once we have made this leap of faith, metaphorical applications pop up all around us: "Barnaby eats his meat so rare we think of him as a borderline crudivore."
In Play: Although this funny word is just creeping into English, and even though it refers to an eating fad, wider applications can be imagined: "Most species are crudivores, so what is the word for a species that eats cooked food?" Once we have made this leap of faith, metaphorical applications pop up all around us: "Barnaby eats his meat so rare we think of him as a borderline crudivore."
Word History: This very new word was concocted from Latin crudus "raw, unripe, undigested" + -vorus, from vorare "to gobble up, devour". Believe it or not, Latin crudus and English raw started out as the same word, Proto-Indo-European kreu- "raw flesh". The initial K quite regularly became Latin C and English H, giving us Old English hreaw "raw". Initial H before consonants vanished in English on the trip to us. Latin added the suffix -d plus its own endings and, voila, crudus! English took the French variant of that one, too, as crude. It arrived in Russian as krov' "blood".