forager
Americannoun
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a person or animal who goes out in search of food or provisions of any kind.
The ants you see are the foragers, out looking for food and water, and they represent only a very small number of the total colony.
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someone who collects or obtains things through hunting or searching about.
We meet the protagonist struggling to make ends meet as a scrap-metal forager in a remote community.
Etymology
Origin of forager
First recorded in 1350–1400, for an earlier sense; forag(e) ( def. ) + -er 1 ( def. )
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.
Lancashire forager Colin Unsworth said some species had appeared in "bumper" numbers, although others had been harder to find.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
On an off-day hike, Newton and a forager friend had to spring into action when a restaurant called with an order for five pounds of ramps to be delivered the next day.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
The space was redolent of chanterelles, a bowlful of which she’d just received from a forager friend in exchange for a burger.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 13, 2024
“It’s probably a lot more ubiquitous than we understood,” says co-author Bruce Winterhalder, a behavioral ecologist at UC Davis and pioneering scholar of forager theory.
From Science Magazine ● May 12, 2024
The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
