phagism

phagism (uncountable)

1. A trophic pattern (one of monophagy, oligophagy, or polyphagy).
   • 1969, Andrzej Samuel Kostrowicki, Geography of the Palaearctic Papilionoidea (Lepidoptera)., Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe Oddział, page 71:

     The relation of the said groups of phagism to the life - forms of the plants they live on is shown in Table 9.

   • 1974, Frank Slansky, Energetic and Nutritional Interactions Between Larvae of the Imported Cabbage Butterfly, Pieris Rapae L., and Cruciferous Food-plants, page 241:

     Finally, Brues' third prediction regarding the presence of regional and/or seasonal preferences (i.e., Brues' host races) appears fairly well documented for insects of all phagism categories ( Brues, 1923; 1946; Buxton, 1923; Brower, 1958b; Dowwney & Fuller, 1961; Neck, 1973).

   • 1985, Comprehensive Insect Physiology, Biochemistry, and Pharmacology, page 476:

     The most common mode of diet specialization among phytophagous insects seems to lie between the two extreme forms of phagism.

2. (psychology, rare) A desire to eat that is not based on nutritional need.
   • 1972, Samy Mokhtar, Abdel Malik, The Conquest of Cosmophobia: The Psychopathology of Civilization, page 289:

     Precosmophobic phagism, or undifferentiated phagism, is phagism with no limits of space or time: the devouring mouth, as it were, unites the individual with the whole world for all time.

   • 1974, Canadian Psychiatric Association, Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, Canadian Psychiatric Association., page 419:

     In the scale of awareness, scatism shares with cosmophobic phagism the cosmophobic level of awareness, although there can be no doubt that both culturally and individually cosmophobic phagism is far more important than scatism.

• Gampish