scavenger
noun /ˈskævɪndʒə(r)/
/ˈskævɪndʒər/
- an animal, a bird or a person that scavengesOxford Collocations DictionaryScavenger is used before these nouns:
- hunt
Word Originmid 16th cent.: alteration of earlier scavager, from Anglo-Norman French scawager, from Old Northern French escauwer ‘inspect’, from Flemish scauwen ‘to show’. The term originally denoted an officer who collected scavage, a toll on foreign merchants' goods offered for sale in a town, later a person who kept the streets clean.