Other forms: carnivores
A carnivore is an animal that eats meat. A large carnivore, carnivores and herbivores, an obligate carnivore.
An obligate carnivore cannot survive on anything else, and the cat is the standard example — it needs taurine, which plants do not supply. In zoology, Carnivora is an order that includes the giant panda, which eats almost nothing but bamboo.
1nouncarnivoreAn animal that eats meat.
“Lions are carnivores and hunt zebras, buffalo and antelope.”
carnivore is an animal.
Latin carnivorus means flesh-eating — caro, flesh, plus vorare, to devour.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷerh₃-
Latin
carnivorus
French
carnivore
English, today
carnivore
Borrowed from French carnivore, from Latin carnivorus. In the zoological sense, coined by William Whewell in 1840 as an adaptation of Cuvier's coinage, French carnivore.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA