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hunter-gatherer

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

noun

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


hunter-gatherer British  

adjective

  1. (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

  1. 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

Vocabulary lists containing hunter-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.

See Examples For:

The hypothesis itself arose from observations of grandmothers’ behaviors in extant hunter-gatherer groups in the 1980s.

From The Wall Street Journal Jul. 28, 2026

A study published in Nature found that plague was already killing people 5,500 years ago in small hunter-gatherer groups, thousands of years before farming communities and cities emerged.

From Science Daily Jun. 18, 2026

For example, when early Neolithic farmers first moved into Europe, they interacted little with the local hunter-gatherer people.

From Science Daily May 30, 2026

They envisioned a contact zone between pioneer farming groups arriving by “leapfrog colonisation” and hunter-gatherer areas.

From Science Daily May 30, 2026

That strength of brute numbers was the first of many military advantages that food-producing tribes gained over hunter-gatherer tribes.

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

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