Last night, we ran across several challenging and interesting words as we pored over a word list. One was xylophagous so we took the opportunity to break down the word and explore its combining forms in a little more detail.
xylophagous combines xyl- and -phagous. xyl- we have run across before in at least one common word, xylophone, and it refers to wood or wooden.
The -phagous ending of xylophagous combines phag + ous. Phag comes from the Greek verb phagein, meaning ‘to eat’, and the -ous is the standard English adjective suffix.
From this, we derive the meaning of the adjective xylophagous as ‘wood eating’.
Other -phagous words taken from various sections of the Consolidated Word List are:
carpophagous
lichenophagous
mycophagous
oophagous
bibliophagous
ectophagous
hylophagous
phyllophagous
stenophagous
anthropophagous
arachnophagous
bacteriophagic (bacteriophagous)
biophagous
euryphagous
macrophagous
monophagous
oligophagous
ophiophagous
saurophagous
zoophagous
We can guess the meaning of many of these words from our knowledge of common prefixes (mon- or mono- means ‘having one or single’ so we can guess monophagous means ‘having one food’, or ‘feeding on a single food’ etc.)
Greek words are often considered slightly more complex in nature, but these words comprise a single combining form and -phagous.
Of the 64 entries found in W3 ending in the combining form -phagous, 57 of them combine with -phagous by using the vowel ‘o’ (arachn-o-phagous, plasm-o-phagous etc.)1 The exceptions are:
polyphagous
poephagous
melliphagous / meliphagous (for the purpose of spelling bee study this can probably be discounted due to variant spellings)
galliphagous
euryphagous
adephagous
It is also good to be aware that many of these words have comparable nouns, taking the -phagy noun combining form (monophagy, polyphagy, sarcophagy etc.) and some may exist in the alternative adjectival form taking the -phagic combining form (bacteriophagic, phyllophagic etc.)
References
1. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary