forage

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.

   “The hermit was apparently somewhat moved to compassion by the anxiety as well as address which the stranger displayed in tending his horse; for, muttering something about provender left for the keeper's palfrey, he dragged out of a recess a bundle of forage, which he spread before the knight's charger.”

   “To invade the corn, and to their cells convey / The plundered forage of their yellow prey”

2. (countable, uncountable)An act or instance of foraging.

   “He [the lion] from forage will incline to play.”

   “[Charles] Mawhood completed his forage unmolested, and returned to Philadelphia.”

   “‘My dears,’ he discourses to them — how he licks his gums, long toothless, as he speaks of his forages into the well-stored cellars: […]”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)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.”

2. To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.

   “And your great-uncle's, Edward the Black Prince, / Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy, / Making defeat on the full power of France, / Whiles his most mighty father on a hill / Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp / Forage in blood of French nobility.”

3. To rummage.

   “Using the blankets for a basket, we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to swell our growing midden on the deck; and then Nares, going on hands and knees, began to forage underneath the bed.”

4. Of an animal: to seek out and eat food.