vbl. sb. [see -ING1.]
1. The action of the vb. FORAGE in various senses.
1481. Caxton, Godfrey, xxxv. 72. The noble men sawe this and seute out on fouragyng ouer alle the countrey.
1651–3. Jer. Taylor, Serm. for Year, I. xvii. 216–7. So when a Libian Tiger drawn from his wilder forragings is shut up and taught to eat civil meat and suffer the authority of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison and payes to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat: But if he chance to come again and taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into his naturall cruelty.
1832. W. Irving, Alhambra, I. 20. They contained the contributions of four days’ journeying, but had been signally enriched by the foraging of the previous evening, in a plenteous inn at Antequera.
1861. J. G. Holland, Lessons in Life, xxiii. 327. His Childe Harold is nothing but the record of his tireless foraging.
2. Comb., as foraging-expedition, -party, -ship; foraging-cap = forage-cap.
1830. Moore, Mem. (1854), VI. 143–4. Saw with him a short, slight figure (the back turned towards me), with a light step, and dressed in a neat blue frock and a *foraging cap.
1863. Bates, Nat. Amazon, II. v. 363. This ant goes on *foraging expeditions like the rest of its tribe.
1780. D. Brodhead, in Sparks, Corr. Amer. Rev. (1853), III. 10. But what I shall do for further supplies, I cannot devise; unless I send out *foraging parties, and impress cattle; for the public has neither money nor credit here.
1809. Naval Chron., XXI. 394, note. The Conqueror, which it will be recollected was a *foraging ship.
