man-eating

adj

"man-eating" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“man-eating” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
10
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Inclined to eat human flesh; that attacks and kills humans for food.

Corpus desk

Index EN-man-eating · man-eating · English

man-eating · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 10 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "M" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for man-eating
PropertyValue
Headwordman-eating
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechAdjective
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “man-eating” in English

man-eatingfalls 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.

Rare enough to double-check

man-eating is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Inclined to eat human flesh; that attacks and kills humans for food.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for man-eating in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is man-eating, spelled M-A-N---E-A-T-I-N-G.

Definition

  1. 1
    Inclined to eat human flesh; that attacks and kills humans for food.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how man-eating appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. [T]he den of a man-eating tiger, or a mad dog, could not be more dreaded.
  2. The Lumbardar scouted the idea; the only man-eating leopard in those parts has been killed by the valorous sahib-thanks be to Allah!

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-eating"?
"man-eating" is spelled M-A-N---E-A-T-I-N-G.
What does "man-eating" mean?
As an adjective, "man-eating" means: Inclined to eat human flesh; that attacks and kills humans for food.
What language does "man-eating" come from?
"man-eating" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list