hunter-gatherer

American

[huhn-ter-gath-er-er] / ˈhʌn tərˈgæð ər ər /

noun

Anthropology.

a member of a group of people who subsist by hunting, fishing, or foraging in the wild.

hunter-gatherer British

adjective

(of a society, lifestyle, etc) surviving by hunting animals and gathering plants for subsistence

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

noun

a member of such a society

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

About 5,500 years ago, hunter-gatherers lived there, surviving mainly on seal hunting and fishing.

From Science Daily

Both Neanderthals and later Mesolithic hunter-gatherers significantly altered vegetation patterns across Europe, long before agriculture began.

From Science Daily

In addition, many present-day hunter-gatherer societies still include scavenging as part of their subsistence practices, demonstrating that it remains a practical and effective strategy.

From Science Daily

According to Pailler, there could have been a transmission of know-how on extracting, cutting and transporting the stones between older Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming Neolithic agriculturists.

From BBC

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans evolved to meet the physical and psychological demands of hunter-gatherer life, which required frequent movement, short bursts of intense stress and daily exposure to natural settings.

From Science Daily

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023