cannibalismn.

1634 T. Herbert Relation Some Yeares Trauaile 99 Men from their infancie educated to Canibalisme.

a1656 Bp. J. Hall Shaking of Olive-tree (1660) ii. 290 Corporally then to eat (if it were possible) the flesh of Christ..could be no other then a kinde of religious Cannibalisme.

1796 E. Burke Two Lett. Peace Regicide Directory France i. 105 By cannibalism, I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered.

1824 Methodist Missionary Soc. Rec. 26 Jan. To two Brothers of mine, these monsters exposed several pieces of human flesh... There is no doubt of their cannibalism. Pray for me, and for them.

1879 A. R. Wallace Australasia v. 93 Cannibalism is..practised in most of the tribes.

1915 Pop. Sci. Monthly Sept. 292 Cannibalism is almost unknown among peoples whose meat-supply has always been abundant and varied.

1956 Life 27 Feb. 77/1 A singular aspect of Ertebølle culture, however, was cannibalism. Human bones, split open and scraped clean..are evidence that the Scandinavian seafood eaters also fed on marrow.

2004 F. Lawrence Not on Label i. 22 Animal welfare groups have regularly video-recorded signs of acute stress in birds including..cannibalism of dead chickens.

1702 H. Michel Nuperus Jacobitismus: St. Paul's Triumphal Confutat. in Two Serm. Ded. sig. A2^v We of the Sacred Robe..are sure (above all others) to be worryed by the Erastian Mob, that is unto such a Barbarous Cannibalism.

1817 I. D'Israeli Curiosities of Lit. 1st Ser. III. 451 At the age of eighty, he was torn to pieces in the City... One more instance of the political cannibalism of the mob.

1906 Watson's Mag. Dec. 229/2 We have not yet emerged from virtual cannibalism and savagery, from the rankest injustice, in the evolution of our moral ideas.

1961 Western Polit. Q. 14 293 The subject of ‘political cannibalism’ was aired, for instance. Illustrations were given of Republican candidates who lost an election by less than 5 per cent of the vote cast because of destructive civil wars within the party.

2017 Welland (Ont.) Tribune (Nexis) 28 Nov. a3 Even if it means carving away 1,400 jobs here in Niagara to help Woodbine, they're willing to do that. To me, that's cannibalism.

1846 Southern & Western Lit. Messenger & Rev. June 353/2 A kind of literary cannibalism, by which authorship feeds upon authors, and volumes grow from the contents of books.

1947 L. Hastings Dragons are Extra i. 25 He collected second-hand cars... Tinkering them up, and practising the same sort of cannibalism that long after became an M.T. [sc. motor transport] necessity in modern war.

2008 Times (Nexis) 4 Dec. 8 (caption) Thievery and cannibalism, or great art? Visitors to the National will be invited to consider Picasso's Las Meninas, after Velásquez.