The building blocks of English

Affixes

-vore

Also ‑vora and ‑vorous.

An organism living on a given type of food.

Latin ‑vorus, from vorare, to devour.

Examples include carnivore (Latin caro, carn‑, flesh), a flesh-eating animal; herbivore (Latin herba, herb, green vegetation), an animal that eats plants; and omnivore (Latin omnis, all), an animal or person that eats a variety of food of both plant and animal origin.

The associated ending ‑vorous (see ‑ous) supplies adjectives: carnivorous; insectivorous, feeding on insects; nectarivorous, feeding on nectar.

The suffix ‑vora appears in the names of animal classifications: Carnivora is an order of flesh-eating mammals that includes the cats, dogs, and hyenas; Insectivora is an order of small mammals that live on insects, such as the shrews, moles, and hedgehogs.