forage
v.to search widely for food or other useful things. You use this when animals look for food in the wild or when people search for items they need.
v.to search widely for food or provisions; to scavenge or hunt for resources. Often used in biological contexts to describe animal behavior or in human contexts for searching through discarded materials.
“The bears forage for berries in the forest.”
“During the winter months, deer often forage in suburban gardens because their natural food sources are buried under snow.”
“The survivalist spent the afternoon teaching the group how to forage for edible mushrooms and wild garlic while avoiding toxic lookalikes found in the same damp soil.”
Intransitive when describing the general act; transitive when the object is the place being searched. Frequently takes the preposition 'for'.
When the object is the item being sought rather than the location, the verb requires the preposition 'for'.
“However, researchers found that exposed bees foraged 13 percent less after only three days and showed changes in brain chemicals linked to behavior.”
“Researchers found that two chemical signals push clonal raider ants toward either caring for larvae or leaving to forage, with the balance changing as the ants grow older.”
Common in science and environment writing
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, fōþer (“food, fodder, covering, case, basket”), Dutch voeder (“forage, food, feed”), Danish foder (“fodder, feed”), Icelandic fóðr (“fodder, sheath”). More at fodder, food. Unrelated to modern French forage (“drilling”), whose first element is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“to pierce”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.