Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Feeding on grasses.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Feeding or subsisting on grass: said of oxen, sheep, horses, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Feeding or subsisting on grass, and the like food; -- said of horses, cattle, and other animals.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective entomology That eats grasses and seeds.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin grāmen, grāmin-, grass + –vorous.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin graminivorus, from gramen ("grass") + vorus

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Examples

  • "graminivorous" than any other people I know, and with respect to this their taste appears to me to give the anthropologist a hint of certain traits of the mode of life of the people of the Stone Age which have been completely overlooked.

    The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II Alexander Leslie 1866

  • I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.

    David Copperfield 2007

  • Sheep and goats are graminivorous, but sheep browse assiduously and steadily, whereas goats shift their ground rapidly, and browse only on the tips of the herbage.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • Horned animals, domesticated or wild, and all such as are not jag-toothed, are all frugivorous and graminivorous, save under great stress of hunger.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • Animals that are coated with tessellates-such as the lizard and the other quadrupeds, and the serpents-are omnivorous: at all events they are carnivorous and graminivorous; and serpents, by the way, are of all animals the greatest gluttons.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • Also, some are carnivorous, some graminivorous, some omnivorous: whilst some feed on a peculiar diet, as for instance the bees and the spiders, for the bee lives on honey and certain other sweets, and the spider lives by catching flies; and some creatures live on fish.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.

    Hard Times 2002

  • Not a single stage-property of poetry did they bring with them but the good old Devil, with his graminivorous attributes, and even he could not stand the climate.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 37, November, 1860 Various

  • It had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous, ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.

    Ten Girls from Dickens Kate Dickinson Sweetser

  • Frontal prominences, more truly so termed, are even better developed in peaceful, timid, graminivorous quadrupeds than in the skulls of man or of ape.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 Various

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