voca: scavenger

Merriam-Webster’s
Word of the Day

May 8

scavenger

SKAV-un-jer  

noun

Meaning

     1 chiefly British : a person employed to remove dirt and refuse from streets
   * 2 : one who collects or salvages garbage or junk
     3 : an organism that typically feeds on refuse or carrion

Example Sentence

     Scavengers took the broken lamp that I left on the curb last night.

	See a map of "scavenger" in the Visual Thesaurus.

Did you know?

     You might guess that “scavenger” is a derivative of “scavenge,” but the reverse is actually true; “scavenger” is the older word, first appearing in English in 1530, and the back-formation “scavenge” came into English in the mid-17th century. “Scavenger” is an alteration of the earlier “scavager,” itself from Anglo-French “scawageour,” meaning “collector of scavage.” In medieval times, “scavage” was a tax levied by towns and cities on goods put up for sale by nonresidents, in order to provide resident merchants with a competitive advantage. The officers in charge of collecting this tax were later made responsible for keeping streets clean, and that’s how “scavenger” came to refer to a public sanitation employee in Great Britain before acquiring its current sense referring to a person who salvages discarded items.