gatherer
Americannoun
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a person or thing that collects, brings together, or accumulates.
The artist acts as both gatherer and creator, collecting vintage artifacts and orchestrating them into open-ended narratives.
The data gatherers are to inquire about product safety, potential drug interactions, cost, and efficacy.
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a person who comes together with others.
In Black churches throughout the South, gatherers celebrated “Watch Night” on December 31, 1862, counting down to the moment when the Emancipation Proclamation would take effect.
Etymology
Origin of gatherer
Explanation
A gatherer is someone who collects or forages things. In the late fall, squirrels become gatherers, grabbing all the acorns they can find and saving them for winter snacks. Anyone who gathers, assembles, or collects things can be described as a gatherer. Some gatherers (like squirrels) accumulate food that they find here and there. Early humans were hunter-gatherers, meaning that acquired food both by hunting animals and by foraging for roots, mushrooms, berries, and other nutritious plants.
Vocabulary lists containing gatherer
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.
Cox proved to be Young’s ablest intelligence gatherer, even if the occasional bribes she endorsed put her agents at needless risk.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 31, 2026
In Indonesia, the growing exploitation of nickel to meet surging demand for electric vehicle batteries is endangering the nomadic hunter gatherer people of the Hongana Manyawa community, the report said.
From Barron's • Oct. 27, 2025
After being a lifelong gatherer of art, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum opened to the public in June 2022.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 5, 2025
Heywood said he knows of at least one instance where a signature gatherer was paid $3,500 to go to Florida and work there.
From Seattle Times • Dec. 16, 2023
A gatherer took my penny and I shuffled on, jostled from this side and that, until I bumped up against an unmoving mass of spectators.
From "The Shakespeare Stealer" by Gary L. Blackwood
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.
