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Scavenger   /skˈævəndʒər/   Listen
Scavenger

noun
1.
A chemical agent that is added to a chemical mixture to counteract the effects of impurities.
2.
Someone who collects things that have been discarded by others.  Synonyms: magpie, pack rat.
3.
Any animal that feeds on refuse and other decaying organic matter.



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"Scavenger" Quotes from Famous Books



... Josh had paid no attention to such posted notices. The work of gathering drift-logs he considered beneath the dignity of an old sea-captain. "I'm not a scavenger," he had often told people, when they had asked him why he didn't collect the logs which always floated near his shore, and into the little cove just below his house. "If I can't make a livin' without doin' sich work, ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that I got booked in the way-bill for Dakhala, or Atbara Camp, 390 miles away. The construction of the Halfa-Atbara line was, as I have said before, a masterpiece of military strategy, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... was no hour for finding cabs; it was the hour of the scavenger and no other being; and Rachel walked into broad sunlight before she spied a solitary hansom. It was then she did the strangest thing; instead of driving straight back for her trunk, when near the house she gave the cabman other directions, subsequently ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... Watchman, the record of which will afford us a good opportunity of learning something of what the duties of the office were. The Beadle combined in his office a number of duties, including one which he must have felt a little infra dig—I mean the office of scavenger! The following ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... tombed at rest, Sweat odours dank with Torpor's cold; Infernal paeons shake the busts Of idols planted in the light. And, ere immewed gyres froth black mists Unto all ghauts and splinter'd domes That cypher signs of dungeoned dell, A turgid dawn arrays this vale, Each dysodile scavenger sits On a tomb and fondles gray bones; An eyeless toad croaks from a well. Then cosmic force forsakes each dale: 'Mis Cyclopean pulse of hell Giant cauldrons vomit vapours green And skirr thro' bristling lanes and halls: Whilst beacons die and shrood each soul, Dank tears drop on a fatal bell, Wrought ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... thrilling adventures were everyday occurrences to him. The trapper's life is infinitely more exciting and dangerous than the hunter's, inasmuch as the latter hunts to kill, while the trapper hunts to capture, and the relative risks are not, therefore, comparable; but Spencer's adventure with the "scavenger of the wilds," as the spotted hyena is sometimes aptly called, was something so terrible that even he could ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... A noted American scavenger is the peccary, a species of wild hog, whose home ranges from Texas to the Pampas of South America. He is a devourer of creatures more obnoxious than himself. He moves with great rapidity, is always on the alert, and stops at nothing from mountains to a flowing river. When he attacks an enemy he ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... vulture (Cathartes atratus), acts the part of a scavenger, and as such is of great use throughout the whole centre of South America, as also in the northern continent. Disgusting as are its habits and appearance, it is carefully protected, on account of the service ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... adventure e'er Do chance to reach the widow's ear, It may, b'ing destin'd to assert 875 Her sex's honour, reach her heart: And as such homely treats (they say) Portend good fortune, so this may. VESPASIAN being daub'd with dirt, Was destin'd to the empire for't; 880 And from a Scavenger did come To be a mighty Prince in Rome And why may not this foul address Presage in love the same success Then let us straight, to cleanse our wounds, 885 Advance in quest of nearest ponds, And after (as we first design'd) Swear I've ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... brought in a few of the rabbit-sized scavenger animals. They were all legs and teeth and bristly fur, the meat almost inedible. It would be a waste of the limited ammunition to shoot ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... fatigue. To Lamuse, who invites him to come and stroll with us, Corvisart replies, screwing up the little round nose that is laid flatly on his oblong face like a cork, "Can't—I'm on manure!" He points to the shovel and broom by whose help he is performing his task of scavenger and night-soil man. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... precaution of speaking so as to produce good, not bad, consequences is the doctrine I wish to inculcate. He that should sweep the streets of pea-shells, lest old women might break their necks, would doubtless have good intentions; yet his office would only be that of a scavenger. Speak, but speak to the world at large, not to insignificant individuals. Speak in the tone of a benevolent and disinterested heart, and not of an inflamed and revengeful imagination! otherwise you ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... ground. Moving the tents is not a big job, but rebuilding the cook-house is! I figure that when I leave the army I shall have a few more professions to choose from. For example, I'm a pretty hefty trench digger; then as a scavenger I am pretty good at picking up tin cans and pieces of paper; also I'm an expert in building things such as shelters from any old pieces of timber that we can steal; then as a cook I can now make that wonderful tea ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... poor, so humble, as not to deserve a second glance from the lowest of scavenger or pirate ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin, or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... backwoodsman's work yet to be done, If "those also serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to count it an improbable ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... is wonderfully fitted by nature for the part it has to fill as "scavenger" abroad, this being the name they often go by. It is large and strong, so that the carcase of a horse or a buffalo is not too much for it to attack. Its legs are strong, but not armed with sharp ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... once attracted Amrah by its wide gaping. A stone of large dimensions stood near its mouth. The sun looked into it through the hottest hours of the day, and altogether it seemed uninhabitable by anything living, unless, perchance, by some wild dogs returning from scavenger duty down in Gehenna. Thence, however, and greatly to her surprise, the patient Egyptian beheld two women come, one half supporting, half leading, the other. They were both white-haired; both looked old; but their garments were not rent, and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... corporeal daintiness which is proper to an ornamental class cannot, merely as it stands, be applicable to a dustman. A gentleman is expected to be substantially spotless all the time. But it is no more discreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for a deep-sea diver to be wet. A sweep is no more disgraced when he is covered with soot than Michael Angelo when he is covered with clay, or Bayard when he is covered with blood. Nor have ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... "damn," or "Kismet," according to their various traditions, and go forth comforted to their workaday pursuits. I envy them. I enter this exquisite Torture Chamber, and I shriek at the first twinge of the thumbscrew and faint at the preliminary embraces of the scavenger's daughter. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... time, o'er-rate thy Lays, And blooming Critics, as they spell thee, praise: Blest Coupleteer! by blooming Critics read, At Toilets ogled, and with Sweetmeats fed: See, lisping Toilers grace thy Dunciad's Cause, And scream their witty Scavenger's Applause, While powder'd Wits, and lac'd Cabals rehearse Thy bawdy Cento, and thy Bead-roll Verse; Gay, bugled Statesmen on thy Side debate, And libel'd Blockheads court thee, tho' they hate. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Fools of all Kinds their Suffrages ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... normally or in cases of severe anaemia, but exclusively in leukaemic diseases. U. Gabbi in his recently published work on the haemolytic function of the spleen, also emphasises the difference between the various animal species. In guinea-pigs he found that the spleen acts largely as a scavenger of the red blood corpuscles; in rabbits very slightly. Consequently after removal of the spleen in guinea-pigs the number of red blood corpuscles rose 377,000 in the cubic millimetre, and the amount of haemoglobin ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... (The), an instrument of torture, invented by Sir William Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII. "Scavenger" is a corruption ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... himself that the manner in which he acquits himself in the department in which he is placed, evinces a degree of superiority over his fellow labourer, and gratifies his amour propre with the thought. Even a scavenger would endeavour to persuade you that he has a peculiar manner of sweeping the streets exclusively his own, and that his method of shovelling up the mud and pitching it into the cart is quite unique, and in fact that his innate talent is such that, it has eventually placed him at the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... came, as soon as the scavenger of the Sun sweeps the last traces of the Shades from the streets and squares of Heaven, the magicians returned, and no sooner had they the ring in their hands than they instantly vanished, and not a trace of them was to be ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... by almost all nations he is regarded with hatred, and every man's hand is against him. He is protected neither by custom nor superstition; the sentimentalist cares nothing for him as an object of poetical regard, and the utilitarian is blind to his services as a scavenger. The farmer considers him as the very ringleader of mischief, and uses all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... Frank continued. "A condor is like our vulture or buzzard, a scavenger; and he lacks the bravery of the bald-headed eagle that attacked us when we came near his nest on the tip of Old Thunder Top. Look there, he's off, Andy, and at a good lively clip, too. Good-bye, old ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... all, a word as to diet. A general scavenger, the Burying-beetle refuses no sort of cadaveric putrescence. All is good to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile with no less animation. He accepts without hesitation extraordinary finds, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... was a wild new urgency. Quickly he searched and he found, across all the great ledge, sinews from the gorging which the sun had not yet touched. Some among the tribe stared with immobile contempt, thinking Gral the scavenger was yet hungry. But Gral gathered quickly, and departed, and was soon at the far place by the great bole, where he retrieved his stone and set feverishly ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... droppings with earth in order to secure the scavenger beetles which bury themselves therein, thus he prevents them from rolling a portion ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... fool," as Theagenes said[137] to the scavenger in a rage. Are you going to talk of cats and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... hustling the intestines in the greatest possible haste, in order to remove an obstruction about three hundred inches distant from where these "forcers" had entered the intestinal sewer. With mercury as a scavenger the work is pretty thoroughly done, though extra care has to be taken that some of the teeth may remain after the victim survives the additional intestinal inflammation occasioned ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison



Words linked to "Scavenger" :   animate being, beast, bottom-feeder, chemical agent, hoarder, fauna, animal, brute, scavenge, pack rat, creature



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