Cannibalise

//ˈkænɪbəlaɪz// verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To eat (parts of) another of one's own species. UK, transitive

    "The female black widow spider is known to cannibalise the male."

  2. 2
    use parts of something to repair something else wordnet
  3. 3
    To remove parts of (a machine, etc) for use in other similar machines. UK, transitive

    "to cannibalize an old laptop for parts"

  4. 4
    eat human flesh wordnet
  5. 5
    To reduce sales or market share (for one of one's own products) by introducing another. UK, transitive

    "iPad mini to cannibalize 1M full-size iPad sales."

Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    Rework old material; rehash. UK

    "When the album succeeds, such as on the swaggering, Queen-esque “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us,” it does so on The Darkness’ own terms—that is, as a random ’80s-cliché generator. But with so many tired, lazy callbacks to its own threadbare catalog (including “Love Is Not The Answer,” a watery echo of the epic “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” from 2003’s Permission To Land), Hot Cakes marks the point where The Darkness has stopped cannibalizing the golden age of stadium rock and simply started cannibalizing itself. And, despite Hawkins’ inveterate crotch-grabbing, there was never that much meat there to begin with."

Synonyms

All synonyms
cannibalizecannibalize

Example

More examples

"The female black widow spider is known to cannibalise the male."

Etymology

From cannibal + -ise.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.