An Official Job Title – Scavenger
Hello,
The word scavenger today means somebody who collects things discarded by others – perhaps through a spot of skip-diving, car-booting, or literally in the rubbish bins. It is also used of animals who feed on decaying organic matter. That animal sense was added in the late 1500s. A human scavenger in the past, however, was an official job title and it was an important job.
The word arrived in Middle English in the late 1300s as scavager from scawage in Anglo-French. Scawage was a duty paid to a local official on goods offered for sale in their area. It came from Old North French escauwage (inspection) and before that scouwon in Old High German. The basic idea was that of import charges, or dare I mention the word of 2025 – tariffs?
The original scavenger (which didn’t have that letter n yet) was a London city official who had to charge those duties on goods entering the city for sale by foreign merchants. By the 1500s the scavenger’s job had changed. They organised the removal of refuse from the streets of the city, a vital job to suppress various illnesses, not to mention the rats. The spelling changed around this point too with the addition of the n probably because of other popular words like passenger, harbinger, and messenger. But as late as 1851 scavagery was defined as street-cleaning, so clearly that letter n took a while to stick.
By 1656 the scavenger is described as “an Officer well known in London, that makes clean the streets, by scraping up and carrying away the dust and durt” and in 1755 Samuel Johnson defined it as “a petty magistrate whose province is to keep the streets clean”. Johnson was certain it came from Saxon roots, comparing the Saxon verb scafan (to shave) with the idea of sweeping.
In more recent years the meaning evolved from the idea of disposing of rubbish to one who collects what might be termed rubbish and puts it to use. Trash to treasure, so to speak and a scavenger’s dream.
Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
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