Also called wood rat. Also called trade rat,. a large, bushy-tailed rodent, Neotoma cinerea, of North America, noted for carrying off small articles to store in its nest.
Informal. a person who saves things that are not needed or used but that may have personal or other value.
Informal. an old prospector or guide.
First recorded in 1840–50
First recorded in 1870–75
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A known pack rat, Trump travels often, throws papers and news clips in cardboard boxes and sometimes instructs that boxes be brought along when he travels.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 18, 2023
The Rat Pack connoisseur confesses to being a bit of a pack rat.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2021
He is a pack rat, and kept the original packaging.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 22, 2019
But don’t call Bommarito a pack rat or a hoarder.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 9, 2018
It’s just some ancient pack rat who needs help getting rid of her shit.
From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline
Instead, most of it is a mélange of the pack-rat artist’s correspondence, clippings, snapshots, short reminiscences from friends and former teachers, gallery announcements, brief essays, exhibition photographs and more.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 16, 2018
Brian Prather’s scenic design illustrates Dr. Westheimer’s admitted pack-rat tendencies.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2013
Ms. Haws said the archive benefited from the pack-rat mentality of its founders: the players themselves, who governed the Philharmonic for its first 75 years and kept meticulous records.
From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2011
That was demonstrated by hydrologist Fred Phillips of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who checked an ancient pack-rat midden for evidence of cosmic-ray bombardment of the earth.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yes, just a common everyday wood-rat, for obvious reasons sometimes called a pack-rat.
From Hope Hathaway A Story of Western Ranch Life by Parker, Frances
Kurzweil has preserved fifty boxes of his father’s effects, everything from his letters and photographs to his electric bills, all pack-ratted into a storage facility in Newton, Massachusetts.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 27, 2017
Mr. Showalter doesn’t hang out in the house much, but the pack-ratting motif allows him and his co-writer, Laura Terruso, to pad the story with some family storming and stressing.
From New York Times ● Mar. 10, 2016
But viewers have never seen pack-ratting through the lens of "Thy Father's Chair," a new documentary that makes hoarding as urgent as global warming and as impossible to turn away from as Al Gore's beard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2016
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.
