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.
“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
Haas investigates human behavior in forager societies of the past to better understand human behavior in the present.
From Science Daily • Jan. 24, 2024
There was an especially cute lamb made by Abbi, a forager who, like Dan, brought her own ingredients to the challenge, and a very sleek cartoon-style Highland cow by baker Josh.
From Salon • Sep. 30, 2023
A forager has found a mushroom so rare that she will not share its location for fear of it being damaged.
From BBC • Sep. 28, 2023
The peasant’s ancient ancestor, the forager, may have eaten berries and mushrooms for breakfast; fruits, snails and turtle for lunch; and rabbit steak with wild onions for dinner.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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.
