scavenger
pronunciation
How to pronounce scavenger in British English:
UK [ˈskævɪndʒə(r)]
How to pronounce scavenger in American English:
US [ˈskævɪndʒər]
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- Noun:
- a chemical agent that is added to a chemical mixture to counteract the effects of impurities
- someone who collects things that have been discarded by others
- any animal that feeds on refuse and other decaying organic matter
Word Origin
- scavenger
- scavenger: [15] A scavenger was originally a scavager – the extra n is the same as that intruded into messenger, passenger, etc. This was acquired from Anglo-Norman scawager, and it started life as a term for an official whose job was to collect taxes levied on foreign merchants. Etymologically it denoted ‘inspector’, for it was derived from the verb escauwer ‘inspect’, which was borrowed from Flemish scauwen ‘look at’, a relative of English show.By the 16th century the scavenger had begun to come down in the world, first to a ‘street-cleaner’ and finally to ‘one who gathers or lives on what others have thrown away’. The verb scavenge was derived from it in the 17th century.=> show
- scavenger (n.)
- 1540s, originally "person hired to remove refuse from streets," from Middle English scawageour (late 14c.), London official in charge of collecting tax on goods sold by foreign merchants, from Anglo-French scawager, from scawage "toll or duty on goods offered for sale in one's precinct" (c. 1400), from Old North French escauwage "inspection," from a Germanic source (compare Old High German scouwon, Old English sceawian "to look at, inspect;" see show (v.)). It has come to be regarded as an agent noun in -er, but the verb is a late back-formation from the noun. With intrusive -n- (c. 1500) as in harbinger, passenger, messenger. Extended to animals 1590s. Scavenger hunt is attested from 1937.
Example
- 1. He be just fit for a job as scavenger .
- 2. In the virtual world there.com , members plan on taking part in a scavenger hunt and valentine-themed pajama party .
- 3. There is an explanation ; the tasmanian devil is the world 's largest carnivorous marsupial and a voracious scavenger .
- 4. The shark is usually a scavenger rather than a hunter .
- 5. Current researches suggest that scavenger receptor play an important role in the development of atherosclerosis .