Gather vs Forage - What's the difference?

As verbs the difference between gather and forage

is that gather is to collect; normally separate things while forage is to search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.

As nouns the difference between gather and forage

is that gather is a plait or fold in cloth, made by drawing a thread through it; a pucker while forage is fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.

gather

English

Verb

(en verb)

To collect; normally separate things.

I've been gathering ideas from the people I work with.

She bent down to gather the reluctant cat from beneath the chair.

# Especially, to harvest food.

We went to gather some blackberries from the nearby lane.

# To accumulate over time, to amass little by little.

Over the years he'd gathered a considerable collection of mugs.

# To congregate, or assemble.

People gathered round as he began to tell his story.

#* Tennyson

Tears from the depth of some divine despair / Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.

# To grow gradually larger by accretion.

#* Francis Bacon

Their snowball did not gather as it went.

To bring parts of a whole closer.

She gathered the shawl about her as she stepped into the cold.

# (sewing) To add pleats or folds to a piece of cloth, normally to reduce its width.

A gown should be gathered around the top so that it will remain shaped.

# (knitting) To bring stitches closer together.

Be careful not to stretch or gather your knitting.

If you want to emphasise the shape, it is possible to gather the waistline.

# (architecture) To bring together, or nearer together, in masonry, as for example where the width of a fireplace is rapidly diminished to the width of the flue.

# (nautical) To haul in; to take up.

to gather the slack of a rope

To infer or conclude; to know from a different source.

From his silence, I gathered that things had not gone well.

I gather from Aunty May that you had a good day at the match.

(intransitive, medicine, of a boil or sore) To be filled with pus

Salt water can help boils to gather and then burst.

(glassblowing) To collect molten glass on the end of a tool.

To gain; to win.

* Dryden

He gathers ground upon her in the chase.

Noun

(en noun)

A plait or fold in cloth, made by drawing a thread through it; a pucker.

The inclination forward of the axle journals to keep the wheels from working outward.

The soffit or under surface of the masonry required in gathering. See gather (transitive verb).

(glassblowing) A blob of molten glass collected on the end of a blowpipe.

Derived terms

* gathering iron

Anagrams

* * English ergative verbs

forage

English

Noun

(en noun)

Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses.

* 1819 , :

“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.

(Dryden)

An act or instance of foraging.

* Shakespeare

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

* Marshall

Mawhood completed his forage unmolested.

* 1860 September, “A Chapter on Rats”, in , volume 56, number 3, page 304:

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

(obsolete) The demand for fodder etc by an army from the local population

Verb

(forag)

To search for and gather food for animals, particularly cattle and horses.

* 1841 , , The Deerslayer , Chapter 8:

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.

To rampage through, gathering and destroying as one goes.

* 1599 , , Henry V , Act 1, Scene 2:

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.

To rummage.

* 1898 , , The Wrecker :

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.

Derived terms

* forager