pack rat
noun
a large, bushy-tailed rodent, Neotoma cinerea, of North America, noted for carrying off small articles to store in its nest.
pack rat
1 American
Or
packrat
noun
-
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.
pack-rat
2
American
[pak-rat]
/ ˈpækˌræt /
Or
packrat
verb (used with object)
Informal.
pack-ratted,
pack-ratting
pack rat
British
noun
Etymology
Origin of pack rat1
First recorded in 1840–50
Origin of pack-rat2
First recorded in 1870–75
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:
“Very personal things. My roller skates from the 50s when I played street hockey in Brooklyn. I’m a pack rat and a collector. My restaurant was like my gallery, my museum.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023
People close to Trump say he has long been a pack rat.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2023
He had known that his mother, Sandy Quimby, a half-hour away in Eagle River, was a pack rat.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 22, 2020
He is a pack rat, and kept the original packaging.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 22, 2019
That side of meat had been a big one, but now there wasn’t enough meat left on the rind to interest a pack rat.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
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
Then she remembered the bar of light under the door, and the pack-rat theory was spoiled.
From Jean of the Lazy A by B. M. Bower
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.
