"Locavore" is Oxford Word-of-the-Year

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:45 AM -0500 11/15/07, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>Verbivores:
>
>Is there any rhyme or reason to the -vore versus -phagous suffixation
>for apparently natural dietary habits? Ichthyophagous seems pretty
>common for fish-eaters but herbivore seems to dominate everywhere.
>(Oooops! herbiphagous is there is the zoological lit.)
>
>I find both omnivore and omniphagous, and even fruit-eating bats are
>both carpophagous and fructivores. Do I sense a preference for adj in
>the -phagous and nouns in the -vore? Carnivorous is common, but I'm a
>little iffy about herbivorous and especially fructivorous (including
>stress placement, if carnivorous provides the right analogy).
>
>I also assume all these terms are comic and/or derisive when applied
>to human choice diets, but I haven't checked the anthropological
>literature. When people occasionally ask if I am a vegetarian and I
>reply that I am an omnivore (I think I'll switch to omniphagous and
>see how many respectable places I get thrown out of), I get odd
>responses. Looks like a case of markedness to me.
>
>dInIs (the omniphage?)
>
There's also -(t)arian, as in "vegetarian", "fruitarian",
"flexitarian", and other variants, but maybe all still transparently
linked to the first of these, unlike the -phagous and -vore
formations.  But there are, to choose randomly, 333 g-hits for
"pastatarian".

LH

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