Examples of cannibal in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
This is a very random old news story, but there were these two very scary Pakistani identical twin brothers who were cannibals in the news maybe a decade or so ago.
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Emma Specter, Vogue, 17 Mar. 2025
The cannibals of the South Sea Islands roast human beings alive to satisfy hunger.
—Liz Tracey, JSTOR Daily, 21 Feb. 2025
Now, researchers believe there is conclusive evidence the cave was home to cannibals.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 7 Feb. 2025
Teen Uber: Parents can track their child in real time as they are transported across state lines and sold to cannibals.
—Jiji Lee, The New Yorker, 7 Jan. 2025
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Emma Specter, Vogue, 17 Mar. 2025
The cannibals of the South Sea Islands roast human beings alive to satisfy hunger.
—Liz Tracey, JSTOR Daily, 21 Feb. 2025
Now, researchers believe there is conclusive evidence the cave was home to cannibals.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 7 Feb. 2025
Teen Uber: Parents can track their child in real time as they are transported across state lines and sold to cannibals.
—Jiji Lee, The New Yorker, 7 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cannibal
Cite this Entry
“Cannibal.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cannibal. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
cannibal
noun
can·ni·bal
ˈkan-ə-bəl 
: a human being or an animal that eats its own kind
Etymology
from New Latin Canibalis "Carib," from Spanish Caníbal (same meaning), from Taino (American Indian language of the Greater Antilles) Caniba (same meaning), of Carib origin
Word Origin
On Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the New World the Indigenous peoples whom he encountered in Cuba and Hispaniola told him about a people living to their east, who periodically raided them and whom they greatly feared. In his log Columbus recorded a number of phonetically similar names for this people, including caníbales and caribes. The Spanish court historian Petrus Martyr wrote a Latin account of Columbus's discoveries, first printed in 1516, that used these two words and widely distributed them throughout Europe. In Petrus Martyr's words, "the inhabitants of these islands assert that the Canibales or Caribes are eaters of human flesh." Later, the meaning of the two words diverged. Caribes was applied to the Carib-speaking peoples of the Lesser Antilles and South America who were so feared by their neighbors; it is also ultimately the base of the word Caribbean. Canibales passed into English as a generic word for any creature that eats the flesh of its own kind.
Medical Definition
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