dirt-eater —(dated)
1. (also: clay-eater) miserable people who appease their hunger with a kind of aluminous earth:
- Distinguished from other southerners by hookworm disease were dirt-eaters scattered in sand barrens and pine woods.
2. a contemptuous name for “poor whites” in some parts of the southern United States:
- It rests with you whether you will take rank with the poor whites, the dirt-eaters of the South, or with the best classes of the north.
dirt-eating—a disease of the nutritive functions causing an irresistible craving to eat earth:
- For some time past she had been addicted to dirt-eating (eating earth) … a disease, which terminates in dropsy and death.
See also: eat a peck of dirt / eat dirt.