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Glite Dictionary
📉 To reduce sales 🔧 To take parts 🧟 To eat humans
to cannibalize

to cannibalize

4 7.9
To take parts from one machine like a car to use in another
  • verb
  • /ˈkænɪbəˌlaɪz/
  • Specialized
translation icon : canibalizar
  • National Guard units took nearly 10 years to replenish supplies because the Army had to cannibalize their units for repair parts.
  • cannibalize parts
  • cannibalized for spare parts
  • cannibalized car

So things are being cannibalized, repurposed, right?

Examples

  • After eighteen months of planning, he built a frame for the camera, cannibalized a Hasselblad he had in the studio, replaced its magazine and shutter, and slaved its motor drive to a phonographic turntable.

    Academic text (2003)

  • Bill had his own desktop system, a decrepit old Mac he had been nursing along for years with motherboards and internal modems bought from online junkyards or cannibalized from CPUs purchased at flea markets.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • See here, I had to cannibalize a bunch of other cameras.

    The Phoenix Incident (2015)

  • This one only continued to run because others had been cannibalized for spare parts.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • A damaged B-17 is being cannibalized for its parts.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger testified that "lack of spare parts will force Iraq to begin to cannibalize its military equipment."

    Blog text (29)

  • With a World War I pilot, he once owned a dozen Spads and Nieuports, cannibalizing parts from 10 of them to keep one of each in flying condition.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Starved of car imports, resourceful Cubans have cannibalized washing machines to keep their vintage Buicks and Cadillacs running as long as Fidel Castro.

    Blog text (8)

  • To fix my old motorcycle, I decided to cannibalize parts from a wrecked one in the garage.

  • The technician will cannibalize components from several damaged laptops to create one working machine.

How Extensive

to cannibalize
  • Specialized
4 7.9
to scavenge
8 6.4
to salvage
109 4.4
to repair
365 1.0

Surface Forms

cannibalize infinitive
cannibalized past
cannibalized past participle
cannibalizing present participle
cannibalizes third person singular

Morphology

cannibalize = cannibal (opaque) = cannibal + ize

Although the form is still 'cannibal' plus '-ize', the machine-part sense is a specialized metaphorical extension that is not predictable from the literal base meaning alone.

Etymology

Cannibalize is used for machines when someone takes parts from one item to use in another, like a mechanic who 'eats' parts from an old car to fix a working one. Because cannibalize comes from cannibal ('one who eats their own kind'), this image helps explain the idea of taking parts from the same kind to repair another.