Also 7 -fag-. [ad. Gr. ξηροφαγία: see XERO- and -PHAGY.] The eating of dry food, esp. as a form of fasting practised in the early church.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Xerophagy … the eating dry meats.
1671. F. S. trans. Daille’s Serm. Colossians ii. 2. The stations, the xerofagies, and other disciplines of the Montanists.
1725. trans. Dupin’s Eccl. Hist. 17th C., I. v. 157. In the Week which precedes the Feast of Easter, the Fast was more rigorous, and in some places they eat nothing but dry’d things; which they call’d Xerophagy.
1884. Catholic Dict. (1897), 558/2. (Lent) Some kept the fast of extraordinary strictness known as xerophagy for one day.
1889. Farrar, Lives Fathers, I. v. 190, note. As for xerophagies, says Tertullian, they charge them with being a novel title for a pretended duty.
