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herbivore

American  
[hur-buh-vawr, -vohr] / ˈhɜr bəˌvɔr, -ˌvoʊr /

noun

  1. a herbivorous animal.

herbivore British  
/ ˈhɜːbɪˌvɔː /

noun

  1. an animal that feeds on grass and other plants

  2. informal a liberal, idealistic, or nonmaterialistic person

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
herbivore Scientific  
/ hûr′bə-vôr′,ûr′- /

  1. An animal that feeds mainly or only on plants. In a food chain, herbivores are primary consumers.

  2. Compare carnivore detritivore

herbivore Cultural  

  1. A living thing that eats only plants. Cattle, sheep, and horses are herbivores.

Etymology

Origin of herbivore

1850–55; < New Latin herbivorus; herb, -i-, -vore

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Even so, Tyrannoroter was unlikely to have been a strict herbivore.

From Science Daily • Feb. 11, 2026

Students must do a training stint in each of four main categories — carnivore, herbivore, bird and primate — so they may wind up working with animals they find unpleasant.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 11, 2025

The medium-sized herbivore once roamed the floodplains of what is now the island's south-west coast.

From BBC • Aug. 22, 2025

The newest — described on Thursday by a team of researchers in the journal PeerJ — is Lokiceratops rangiformis, a five-ton herbivore with spectacular, curving brow horns and huge, bladed spikes on its meter-long frill.

From New York Times • Jun. 20, 2024

If instead you want to grow 1,000 pounds of carnivore, you have to feed it 10,000 pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.