forage

From Middle English forage, from Old French fourage, forage, a derivative of fuerre (“fodder, straw”), from Frankish *fōdar (“fodder, sheath”), from Proto-Germanic *fōdrą (“fodder, feed, sheath”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect, to 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.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfɒɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfoɹɪd͡ʒ/, [ˈfo̞ɹɪd͡ʒ]
• (NYC, Ireland) IPA^(key): /ˈfɑɹɪd͡ʒ/

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• Rhymes: -ɒɹɪdʒ

forage (countable and uncountable, plural forages)

1. Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.
   • 1820, Walter Scott, “?”, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], OCLC 230694662:

     “The hermit was apparently somewhat moved to compassion by the anxiety as well as address which the stranger displayed in tending his horse; for, muttering something about provender left for the keeper's palfrey, he dragged out of a recess a bundle of forage, which he spread before the knight's charger.

   • 1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], OCLC 403869432:

     To invade the corn, and to their cells convey
     The plundered forage of their yellow prey

2. An act or instance of foraging.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act IV, scene i]:

     He [the lion] from forage will incline to play.

   • 1803, John Marshall, The Life of George Washington:

     Mawhood completed his forage unmolested.

   • 1860 September, “A Chapter on Rats”, in The Knickerbocker, volume 56, number 3, page 304:

     ‘My dears,’ he discourses to them — how he licks his gums, long toothless, as he speaks of his forages into the well-stored cellars: […]

3. (obsolete) The demand for fodder etc by an army from the local population

• foray

• Forage on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Forage in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

forage (third-person singular simple present forages, present participle foraging, simple past and past participle foraged)

1. To search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.
   • 1841, James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, Chapter 8:

     The message said that the party intended to hunt and forage through this region, for a month or two, afore it went back into the Canadas.

2. To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene ii]:

     And your great-uncle's, Edward the Black Prince, / Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy, / Making defeat on the full power of France, / Whiles his most mighty father on a hill / Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp / Forage in blood of French nobility.

3. To rummage.
   • 1892, Robert Louis Stevenson; Lloyd Osbourne, “The Cabin of the ‘Flying Scud’”, in The Wrecker, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, […], OCLC 1085936561, page 218:

     Using the blankets for a basket, we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to swell our growing midden on the deck; and then Nares, going on hands and knees, began to forage underneath the bed.

4. Of an animal: to seek out and eat food.

• forager

From forer +‎ -age.

• IPA^(key): /fɔ.ʁaʒ/

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forage m (plural forages)

1. drilling (act of drilling)

• “forage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• fforage

Borrowed from Old French fourage; the first element is cognate to fodder.

• IPA^(key): /fɔːˈraːdʒ(ə)/, /fɔˈraːdʒ(ə)/

forage (uncountable)

1. forage (especially dry)

• English: forage

• “fō̆rāǧe, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-10-17.