Scrounger

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual who acquires items by searching for or collecting what others have discarded ; someone who tries to obtain goods or favors by persistent begging or asking rather than earning them
2. A person who gathers or finds leftover or unwanted materials, often for reuse or survival ; one who seeks to gain resources or benefits through unsolicited requests or pleas
3. Someone who livens off scraps or disposes to find free goods left behind by others ; an individual who obtains advantages or things by requesting without offering work or payment

Etymology: "Scrounger" is simply "scrounge" plus the agent suffix "-er," which English has attached to verbs since Old English to name the person who performs the action. The suffix itself has a long pedigree: it passed through Proto-Germanic and Old English, and in Middle English it arrived as a borrowing of the Latin "-arius," which later shaped many French and English words of the same type. The verb "scrounge" is the more interesting half. It is a 19th-century word, originally British slang among soldiers, and it meant to take or steal something that was not nailed down, or to obtain items by hunting for them among what others had left behind. That scavenging sense is what the noun still carries, so a scrounger is first and foremost a salvager of castoffs, and the sense of pestering others for favours developed from that same idea of getting things without paying for them.

Synonyms: beggar, sponger, moocher

Antonyms: giver, donor