scavenger: [15] A scavenger was originally a scavager – the extra n is the same as that intruded into messenger, passenger, etc. This was acquired from Anglo-Norman scawager, and it started life as a term for an official whose job was to collect taxes levied on foreign merchants. Etymologically it denoted ‘inspector’, for it was derived from the verb escauwer ‘inspect’, which was borrowed from Flemish scauwen ‘look at’, a relative of English show.
By the 16th century the scavenger had begun to come down in the world, first to a ‘street-cleaner’ and finally to ‘one who gathers or lives on what others have thrown away’. The verb scavenge was derived from it in the 17th century. => show
scavenger (n.)
1540s, originally "person hired to remove refuse from streets," from Middle English scawageour (late 14c.), London official in charge of collecting tax on goods sold by foreign merchants, from Anglo-French scawager, from scawage "toll or duty on goods offered for sale in one's precinct" (c. 1400), from Old North French escauwage "inspection," from a Germanic source (compare Old High German scouwon, Old English sceawian "to look at, inspect;" see show (v.)).
It has come to be regarded as an agent noun in -er, but the verb is a late back-formation from the noun. With intrusive -n- (c. 1500) as in harbinger, passenger, messenger. Extended to animals 1590s. Scavenger hunt is attested from 1937.
实用例句
1. He's just fit for a job as scavenger.
他只配当个清道夫.
来自辞典例句
2. He is not a scavenger nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are.
它不是食腐动物,也不像有些鲨鱼那样,只知道游来游去满足食欲.
来自英汉文学 - 老人与海
3. Mulberry red pigment hence was a good kind of natural radical scavenger.
桑椹红色素是一种很好的天然自由基清除剂.
来自互联网
4. He be just fit for a job as scavenger.
他正好当个清道夫之职.
来自互联网
5. Glutathione peroxidase ( GSH - Px ) acts as a free radical scavenger.