Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Plant material that livestock graze or that is cut and fed to them.
  • noun The act of looking or searching for food or provisions.
  • intransitive verb To wander in search of food or provisions.
  • intransitive verb To make a raid, as for food.
  • intransitive verb To conduct a search; rummage.
  • intransitive verb To collect forage from; strip of food or supplies.
  • intransitive verb Informal To obtain by foraging.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Food of any kind for horses and cattle, as grass, pasture, hay, oats, etc.: also used humorously of human food.
  • noun The act of providing forage; the act of searching for provisions of any kind: as, the troop subsisted by forage.
  • noun Synonyms Fodder, etc. See feed, n.
  • To procure food for horses or cattle by a roving search from place to place; specifically (military), to collect supplies for horses, and also for men or stock, from an enemy by force, or from friends by impressment; in general, to procure provisions or goods of any kind in a predatory manner.
  • To ravage; feed on spoil.
  • To wander far; rove; range.
  • To strip of provisions, as for horses, troops, etc.
  • To supply with forage or fodder: as, to forage horses.
  • To ransack; overrun, as when searching for forage.
  • To procure by forage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of foraging; search for provisions, etc.
  • noun Food of any kind for animals, especially for horses and cattle, as grass, pasture, hay, corn, oats.
  • noun See under Cap.
  • noun (Mil.) a person charged with providing forage and the means of transporting it.
  • transitive verb To strip of provisions; to supply with forage.
  • intransitive verb To wander or rove in search of food; to collect food, esp. forage, for horses and cattle by feeding on or stripping the country; to ravage; to feed on spoil.
  • intransitive verb (Zoöl.) one of several species of ants of the genus Eciton, very abundant in tropical America, remarkable for marching in vast armies in search of food.
  • intransitive verb a forage cap.
  • intransitive verb a party sent out after forage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.
  • verb To search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.
  • verb To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.
  • verb To rummage.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb collect or look around for (food)
  • verb wander and feed
  • noun bulky food like grass or hay for browsing or grazing horses or cattle
  • noun the act of searching for food and provisions

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French fourrage, from forrer, to forage, from feurre, fodder, of Germanic origin; see pā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old French fourage, forage, a derivative of fuerre ("fodder, straw"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish *fōdar (“fodder, sheath”), from Proto-Germanic *fōdran (“fodder, feed, sheath”), from Proto-Indo-European *patrom (“fodder”), *pat- (“to feed”), *pāy- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Cognate with Old High German fuotar (German Futter ("fodder, feed")), Old English fōdor, fōþor ("food, fodder, covering, case, basket"), Dutch voeder ("forage, food, feed"), Danish foder ("fodder, feed"), Icelandic fóðr ("fodder, sheath"). More at fodder, food.

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Examples

  • A third of that is what they call forage fish - herring, anchovies, little things like that.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • A third of that is what they call forage fish - herring, anchovies, little things like that.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • The click they produce alerts bass that natural forage is near by.

    Favorite Lures of the Largemouth Guides 2009

  • Weight: 1/5 oz. Details: Crayfish are the main forage of our smallmouth.

    Favorite Lures of the Smallmouth Guides 2009

  • For example, 30 percent of the dry matter intake of ruminant animals is to be provided from grazing (this is when an animal breaks off forage from a living plant whose roots are still attached to the soil, green chop transported to the animals is not pasture) or from forage that has been cut and is still laying in the pasture as “residual forage.”

    Archive 2010-03-01 Olga Bonfiglio 2010

  • For example, 30 percent of the dry matter intake of ruminant animals is to be provided from grazing (this is when an animal breaks off forage from a living plant whose roots are still attached to the soil, green chop transported to the animals is not pasture) or from forage that has been cut and is still laying in the pasture as “residual forage.”

    Got Data and Regs! Olga Bonfiglio 2010

  • They work about as well as native softfin forage, but I have seen their use or release ruin a fishery.

    Has anyone ever used goldfish as catfish bait? If so, how do they work? 2009

  • Their definition of forage fish includes fishes, squids, and the shrimp-like crustaceans called krill that swarm in cold waters where they feed everything from seabirds to whales.

    Carl Safina: Seabirds: The Other Seafood Lovers Carl Safina 2012

  • They work about as well as native softfin forage, but I have seen their use or release ruin a fishery.

    Has anyone ever used goldfish as catfish bait? If so, how do they work? 2009

  • The bleeding sucker is a dead-on imitation of a real sucker, which happens to be a main forage item for the larger pike and muskies in the Allegheny.

    Favorite Lures of the Pike Guides 2009

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