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🗑️ To search waste 🦅 To eat dead things 🧹 To clean up ⚗️ To remove harmful things
to scavenge

to scavenge

4 6.7
To eat dead animals and food scraps
  • verb
  • /ˈskævɪndʒ/
translation icon : alimentarse de
  • Photo (color): Arctic foxes sometimes hang around polar bears, looking for carrion to scavenge, but they have to be careful.
  • scavenge the remains

They have nothing, just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they're wearing, a cart of scavenged food and each other way.

Examples

  • A serious reduction in the wolf population has meant fewer wolf-killed carcasses for the foxes to scavenge.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Hawk owls are also thought to scavenge the remains of adult snowshoe hares in winter.

    Academic text (2003)

  • Carnivorous animals searching for food often scavenge the remains.

    Academic text (2010)

  • After this, our ancestors would scavenge the parts that were left behind, the meat and the marrow.

  • Some say a few lost-dogs continue to roam and scavenge on Trash Island.

    Isle of Dogs (2018)

  • And they've lived there for years, only coming out on nights like this to scavenge among the rotten remains of no man's land.

    Bunker (2023)

  • But he was unwilling to rule out the possibility that other animals killed some of the calves and that wolves scavenged the carcasses.

    Academic text (1999)

  • After the closing banquet, they walked the short beach behind the hotel where stray gulls and herons scavenged along the broken seawall.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • In addition to actively hunting—for example, uprooting worms from the sea-floor sediment—Triarthrus may also have scavenged remains of dead animals.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Bears often scavenge for food in areas where other animals have left behind scraps.

Synonyms

to devour
vsto scavenge
53 3.9

To destroy or use up things quickly, for example when fire burns a building

focuses on feeding from dead or discarded sources rather than on eagerness
to scrounge
vsto scavenge
  • Informal
12 6.8

To search for food or supplies by using what you find

feeds mainly on dead or decaying matter or discarded refuse

How Predatory

to maul
  • NSFW
29 7.2
to devour
53 3.9
to prey
16 3.7
to capture
884 2.8
to scavenge
4 6.7
to forage
22 4.9

Surface Forms

scavenge infinitive
scavenged past
scavenged past participle
scavenging present participle
scavenges third person singular

Etymology

Scavenge was also used for animals like vultures that pick food from dead bodies, and these animals are called scavengers. That's why scavenge can mean to feed on dead or decaying matter.