Grazer

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɡɹeɪz.ə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. An animal known for its dietary habits that involve feeding on grasses and other low plants while refraining from predatory behaviors
2. A type of animal characterized by a diet consisting mainly of grasses and low-growing plants while avoiding active hunting and scavenging behavior
3. An organism that sustains itself primarily by eating grasses or ground-level plants

Etymology: The word is a straightforward formation: "graze" with the agent suffix "-er," meaning one that grazes. The verb "graze" itself goes back to Old English "grasian," a derivative of "gærs," grass, which is why the verb literally means "to feed on grass." The Old English noun "grasian" was itself a verb form tied to the grass root, and it passed into Middle English as "grasen" before the modern spelling "graze" took hold. The suffix has a longer and more roundabout history. The "-er" ending traces back through Old French "-ier" to Latin "-ārius," a suffix used to form nouns denoting a person connected with something, and it entered Old English as "-ere" and later Middle English "-er." Attaching it to "graze" was an ordinary English process, so "grazer" simply names the animal that does the grazing, first used of livestock and now of wild herbivores such as deer, bison and antelope.

Synonyms: herbivore, forager, pasturer, browser, feed

Antonyms: carnivore, predator