[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
Of American-English origin, the humorous adjective omniverbivorous means: having a large or inexhaustible appetite for words.
This adjective was coined, probably after omnivorous, by the U.S. physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)—cf., below, quotation 1.
The adjective omniverbivorous is composed of:
– the prefix omni-, meaning: all;
– Latin verbi-, from Latin verbum (i.e., word);
– the suffix ‑vorous, meaning: eating.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the adjective omniverbivorous that I have found:
1-: From The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (Boston (Massachusetts): Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1858), by the U.S. physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) [chapter 11, page 300]:
I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation, (as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle—bored. I have seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a brother-minister’s discourse which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word—slow. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.
2-: From An Echo from the Farm, a letter to the Editor, dated Monday 15th January 1877, by ‘Verona Veritas’, published in The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA) of Sunday 21st January 1877 [page 5, column 1]:
Creation roared an elemental bravura at the demise of the old year, and new year’s morning found his obituary record in hyperborean characters over hill and dale. Zeus has been playing a variety of disagreeable pranks with the weather, and has exhausted his catalogue of cheerless horrors, I hope—for it is again warm. We have wished to be a bear that we might hibernate until spring, but I guess we recall it, and are satisfied to remain of the omniverbivorous “kine” to the last.
3, 4 & 5-: From Devol Flashes, by the students of Devol High School, Grandfield, published in the Grandfield Enterprise (Grandfield, Oklahoma, USA):
3-: Of Thursday 14 March 1935 [page 4, column 4]:
LIKES AND DISLIKES
Buford Crow dislikes for people to know he is a sophomore.
[…]
Vosburgh likes to be “omniverbivorous.”
4-: Of Thursday 11th April 1935 [page 4, column 3]:
HIGH SCHOOL ALPHABET
A—Adorable: Eva Larue (Babe) Frye.
B—Bashful: C. H. Dunn and Orville Mitchell.
[…]
O—Omniverbivorous: Bennie Gene Mahaffey.
5-: Of Thursday 16th May 1935 [page 5, column 3]:
SECTION’S ABSTRACT VERBIAGE ELUCIDATED
It has been brought to our attention that some esteemed readers of our columns have observed with alarm, curiosity or at least gratifying interest the use of the word “omniverbivorous.” Lest a sad misunderstanding should exist, we here append a delineation of this specimen of terminology:
Omniverbivorous is little related, if at all, to the word “omnivorous,” with which it may unfortunately be confused. The word was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, noted American author, with which to assert more forcefully his versatility, meaning that he was not limited to just one line of mental pabulum but could chew up and utilize all kinds of words.
We hope ’n’ trust that this little exemplification may render the the [sic] term transpicuous and unequivocal.
word histories 