man-eater

noun

"man-eater" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“man-eater” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An animal that attacks and kills humans for food, such as certain tigers or sharks; any animal that consumes human flesh.

Key facts for man-eater
PropertyValue
Headwordman-eater
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “man-eater” sits in English frequency

man-eater falls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for man-eater is 9 letters long, classified as a noun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No misspelling variants are generated for man-eater in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is man-eater, spelled M-A-N---E-A-T-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    An animal that attacks and kills humans for food, such as certain tigers or sharks; any animal that consumes human flesh.
  2. 2
    A carnivorous plant large enough to consume a human; a man-eating plant.
  3. 3
    A cannibal; a human that eats other humans.
  4. 4
    A seductive dangerous woman, often readily taking and discarding male romantic partners.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "man-eater"?
"man-eater" is spelled M-A-N---E-A-T-E-R.
What does "man-eater" mean?
As a noun, "man-eater" means: An animal that attacks and kills humans for food, such as certain tigers or sharks; any animal that consumes human flesh.
What language does "man-eater" come from?
"man-eater" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Using “man-eater”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct English spelling is M-A-N---E-A-T-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source

Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list FrequencyWords open word-frequency list