pack rat
2
7.3
- noun
- /pæk ræt/
- US
- My pack-rat memory recognizes your name, Juan Cole.
- pack rat nest
Examples
-
Pack rats love to pick up any scrap or shiny object and drag it home.
Fiction book (2000) -
If he left it there, a new pack rat might move in.
Fiction book (2000) -
Will you be doing anything extra to keep the pack rats out of your RV?
Blog text (27) -
Since he had started his job catching pack rats, he had caught and released a dozen of the pesky rodents into the desert, away from houses.
Fiction book (2000) -
He was soon back at work, tearing apart the pack rat's house from around the prickly pear cactus.
Fiction book (2000) -
In the desert, a pack rat scurried around, collecting bits of twigs and shiny objects for its nest.
-
To deter pack rats from entering my attic, I installed metal mesh around the ventilation holes.
-
The nature documentary showed a pack rat carefully hoarding food in its burrow for the winter.
Synonyms
1
8.0
A small animal like a mouse with a bushy tail that collects objects
1
6.7
A small wild animal like a rat that lives in forests, builds nests, and often collects things
1
7.6
A small rodent like a mouse from North America with a bushy tail that collects things for its nest
1
9.1
A small animal with a bushy tail that collects and hides small things
1
9.9
A small North American animal like a rat that collects things to build nests
A small animal like a mouse with a thick bushy tail that lives in western North America and stores food
Surface Forms
Morphology
pack + rat
Although a B1 learner who knows 'pack' (to bundle/store) and 'rat' (the animal) can infer a meaning like 'a rat that stores or hoards things', the precise zoological sense (genus Neotoma) and the conventionalized idiomatic extension to mean a human hoarder are lexicalized and culturally specific. The relation between constituents gives a motivated but not fully predictable meaning, so prior exposure helps.
Etymology
Pack rat names a North American rodent that gathers food and small objects and stores them in its nest. The animal really makes a pack of items, so the rat keeps a lot of things in its home.