forage
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Bulky food like grass or hay for browsing or grazing horses or cattle.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fawrijSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɔɹɪdʒ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Bulky food like grass or hay for browsing or grazing horses or cattle
Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.
An act or instance of foraging.
verb
To search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.
Of an animal: to seek out and eat food.
To rummage.
To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Bulky food like grass or hay for browsing or grazing horses or cattle
Used this way, forage is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use forage
- “The animals forage in the woods.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The act of searching for food and provisions.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to search for and gather food for animals
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.