animivorous

[prettygoodword]

animivorous (an-ni-MIV-or-uhs) - adj., eating living beings, eating souls.


Those are alternatives, rather than additives. The word was coined by W.H. Auden, one of his few coinages, and used in the "Common Life" section of "About the House" (1965), and while we can get the general sense from context and roots, we can't actually be sure which sense he intended:

    every home should be a fortress,

equipped with all the very latest engines
    for keeping Nature at bay,
versed in all ancient magic, the arts of quelling
    the Dark Lord and his hungry

animivorous chimaeras.

And since no one since seems to have taken up the word (an oversight that ought to be rectified), this is the only context we have. BTW, this is not Auden's only approving reference to Tolkien in his works -- he glowingly reviewed The Lord of the Rings in The New York Times when it was first published. (This despite Tolkien having been on the committee that graduated Auden with only a third-class degree -- barely a pass.) As for the roots, anima is Latin for breath, vital force, soul, spirit, and -vore, a suffix for eater of.

---L.