hunter-gatherer

American

[huhn-ter-gath-er-er] / ˈhʌn tərˈgæð ər ər /

noun

Anthropology.

a member of a group of people who subsist by hunting, fishing, or foraging in the wild.

hunter-gatherer British

adjective

(of a society, lifestyle, etc) surviving by hunting animals and gathering plants for subsistence

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

noun

a member of such a society

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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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.

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans evolved to meet the physical and psychological demands of hunter-gatherer life, which required frequent movement, short bursts of intense stress and daily exposure to natural settings.

From Science Daily • Dec. 8, 2025

Back before California was settled by Europeans and others, the Miwok and Nisenan subsisted on a hunter-gatherer diet of acorns, venison, salmon, pine nuts, elderberries, and other berries and plants.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 23, 2025

That was probably useful in a hunter-gatherer society.

From Slate • Aug. 5, 2025

It looks at the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to farming communities.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2024

That radiation can serve as a model for the longer, larger-scale, and less understood radiation of societies on different continents since the end of the last Ice Age, to become variously hunter-gatherer tribes and empires.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023