The word stenophagous means eating a limited variety of food. It derives from Greek stenos, meaning narrow, also found in stenography (literally, narrow writing) and stenosis, a medical term for abnormal narrowing. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Greek Root “Stenos””
I get Anugard’s word of the day in my email, and the other day I saw the word stenophagus.
S-T-E-N-O-P-H-A-G-O-U-S.
Stenophagus?
Snuffleupagus’s invisible brother.
No.
No.
And I’m not even going to say good guess because that wasn’t a good guess.
Steno, maybe it’s the same one that’s in stenography.
Yes.
And phagus is something to do with eating.
Yes.
So is this a bookworm?
No, no, that was a good guess.
But stenos in Greek means narrow.
So like stenosis of the spine is narrowing of the spine.
Gotcha.
Stenography is narrow writing.
Very good.
And so if you’re stenophagus, then you have a very limited range of what you’ll eat.
Oh, I see.
And it’s usually in terms of biology, but, you know, sometimes it’s hard to plan a dinner party if everybody is stenophagus.
That’s right.
You have the vegan table over there.
Right.
Right.
The chem-free table.
Yeah.
Or you have toddlers who only eat goldfish.
Right.
Or Jell-O.
Jell-O, goldfish crackers.
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