forage

Etymology

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.

noun

1. Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.
   To invade the corn, and to their cells convey The plundered forage of their yellow prey
2. An act or instance of foraging.
   ‘My dears,’ he discourses to them — how he licks his gums, long toothless, as he speaks of his forages into the well-stored cellars: […] 1860 September, “A Chapter on Rats”, in The Knickerbocker, volume 56, number 3, page 304
3. (obsolete) The demand for fodder etc by an army from the local population

verb

1. To search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.
   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. 1841, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 8, in The Deerslayer
2. To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.
3. To rummage.
4. Of an animal: to seek out and eat food.