cibarious

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin cibarius, from cibus (“food”).

Adjective

cibarious (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Relating to food.
   • 1795, Paul Dunvan, Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston:

     Bordarius, a term and distinction introduced by the Normans, was a bondman able not only to furnish a house, but also to stock a small farm which he enjoyed under the title of bord lands, whence he furnished the Lord's board with eggs, poultry, and the other cibarious produce of his farm.

   • 1841 January, John Waters, “Quiet Thoughts on Pastoral Life”, in The Knickerbocker; or, New York monthly magazine, page 19:

     'So, so,' said I, 'these markets of ours have still some charm left for them then; and yet they hold forth in praise of their three village butchers, as if no cibarious want were left ungratified.'

   • 1920 December, Livingston Davis, “A Trip to Fiume – May, 1919”, in The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, volume 19, number 114, pages 195–196:

     To subsist these troops necessitated a continued flow of huge, lumbering Fiat trucks […] But all the traffic of the road was not of a cibarious character […]

2. (obsolete, rare) Relating to eating or digestion.

   Synonym: digestive

   • 1833, New Monthly Magazine, volume 38, number 50, page 223:

     Nay, when we pass from this particular accomplishment, and consider his general powers—when we remember his range of appetite through the whole cibarious system—his unfailing faculty of digestion […]

   • 1914, J.H. Pazos, Mosquitoes of the Republic of Cuba, page 3:

     […] where blood suckers (diptera) take an important place by their complicated cibarious parts, innoculating germs developed in their interior.

   • 1856, J. van der Hoeven, translated by William Clark, Handbook of zoology, volume 1, page 657:

     Family XXII. Hyperina or Uroptera. Foot-jaws small, not covering the cibarious organs.

3. (rare) Edible.
   • 1857, Jerome Kidder, The Drama of Earth, page 143:

     Beel[zebub]. So little of regard that clamorous
     The people are, against the distillation
     Of grains cibarious because, indeed,
     There are disturbers that alarm themselves
     Lest that the armies suffer lack of grains;
     Who represent still houses as a curse
     And nurseries of woes and miseries.

   • 1859, Henry Coleman Folkard, The wild-fowler: a treatise on ancient and modern wild-fowling, historical and practical, page 301:

     The flesh of the lapwing is not held in high estimation as a cibarious commodity, though it may be rendered very palatable by an experienced cook.

   • 1918, Robert Whitney Imbrie, Behind the wheel of a war ambulance, page 149:

     Of course there be other foodstuffs. […] The substance most in demand […] is a ghastly sort of plaster exactly resembling putty. Personally, I have never eaten putty but after trying this other stuff, I am convinced I should prefer putty as being more digestible and equally palatable. […] All of these concoctions are regarded by the populace as being cibarious, nay more, as being delightful to eat. Truly the ways of the East be strange.