hunter
Pluralhunters
- 1A person who hunts game, whether for sport or for food.
A skilled hunter can track an elk for miles without being seen.
Hunters in the region still rely on the moose they bring home to feed their families through the winter.
Similarhuntsman
- 2A person who hunts for or pursues something of any kind.
A relentless hunter of talent, the coach scouted high school games every weekend.
Job hunters often send out dozens of applications before landing a single interview.
Similarseeker
Note
Put the thing sought in front and the word makes a compound, written as two words: a fortune hunter, a job hunter. Tennyson builds it with after instead in Idylls of the King (1859): "No keener hunter after glory breathes." The saying the hunter becomes the hunted plays on both this sense and the person who hunts game.
- 3A dog that is used in hunting.
The old hunter lifted its nose, caught the scent, and bounded off into the brush.
The farmer's hunters bayed at the gate while the men loaded their rifles.
Similarhound
- 4A horse that people ride when hunting, especially a thoroughbred specially bred and trained for it.
She schooled her new hunter over fences all summer before the first meet of the season.
He sold two hunters at the fall sale but kept the mare that had carried him for years.
Note
The word sorts horses by the work they do, the way roadster does: Thackeray's The Virginians describes "a sound, swift, well-bred hunter and roadster." In fiction a man's hunter is his mount, ridden into Dublin in Le Fanu or spurred away under dripping trees in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009), and the possessive is usually the clue that a horse, not a person, is meant.
- 5A pocket watch with a round metal lid on a spring hinge that closes over the dial and crystal, protecting both from dust and scratches.
He flipped open the lid of his gold hunter, glanced at the dial, and snapped it shut again.
Collectors pay more for hunters whose covers still close tightly.
Less common meaning
- 6A kind of spider, the huntsman or hunting spider.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English huntere or hunter, equivalent to hunt + -er; compare Old English hunta ("hunter").