CARNIVOROUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does carnivorous mean? 

• CARNIVOROUS (adjective)
  The adjective CARNIVOROUS has 2 senses:

1. relating to or characteristic of carnivores

2. (used of plants as well as animals) feeding on animals

  Familiarity information: CARNIVOROUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CARNIVOROUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relating to or characteristic of carnivores

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

the lion and other carnivorous animals

Pertainym:

carnivore (a terrestrial or aquatic flesh-eating mammal)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(used of plants as well as animals) feeding on animals

Context example:

carnivorous plants are capable of trapping and digesting small animals especially insects

Similar:

flesh-eating; meat-eating; zoophagous ((of animals) carnivorous)

piscivorous (feeding on fishes)

predaceous; predacious (hunting and killing other animals for food)

Domain category:

flora; plant; plant life ((botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion)

Antonym:

herbivorous (feeding only on plants)

insectivorous ((of animals and plants) feeding on insects)

omnivorous (feeding on both plants and animals)

 Context examples 

The look in his eyes as he felt the keen edge and glared at me was positively carnivorous.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A carnivorous animal living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

But its general shape must be what I have indicated, and it can run up a curtain, and it is carnivorous.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Based on a fossil unearthed in southern Tanzania, these early relatives were carnivorous animals that measured approximately 7-10 feet long, with long necks and tails.

(Scientists discover fossil of dinosaur ancestor with surprising croc-like appearance, NSF)

The ferret is carnivorous and crepuscular, spending 14-18 hours a day sleeping.

(Ferret, NCI Thesaurus)

The domestic short-hair cat is a small carnivorous crepuscular mammal that has short fur length and is more slender and active than the domestic long-haired cat.

(Domestic Short Hair Cat, NCI Thesaurus)

I am not myself prepared to go farther than to say in general terms that we have almost certainly been in contact to-night with some form of carnivorous dinosaur.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was a beast—a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

They observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

You licked Cheese-Face because you wouldn't give in, and you wouldn't give in partly because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed what every one about you believed, that the measure of manhood was the carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures' anatomies.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)