The Collaborative International Dictionary
packrat \packrat\, pack rat \pack rat\n.
-
Any of several bushy-tailed rodents of the genus Neotoma of western North America, especially Neotoma cinerea, which hoard food and other objects in their nests.
Syn: trade rat, bushytail woodrat, Neotoma cinerea.
A person who habitually saves items, even those unlikely to be useful. [Informal]
Wiktionary
n. 1 Any of several small North American rodents, of the genus (taxlink Neotoma genus noshow=1), that have bushy tails. 2 One who collects or hoards, especially unnecessary things.
WordNet
n. someone who collects things that have been discarded by others [syn: magpie, scavenger]
any of several bushy-tailed rodents of the genus Neotoma of western North America; hoards food and other objects [syn: packrat, trade rat, bushytail woodrat, Neotoma cinerea]
Wikipedia
A pack rat or packrat, also called a woodrat, can be any of the species in the rodent genus Neotoma. Pack rats have a rat-like appearance with long tails, large ears and large black eyes. Compared to deer mice, harvest mice and grasshopper mice, pack rats are noticeably larger and are usually somewhat larger than cotton rats.
A pack rat is a small rodent in the genus Neotoma.
Pack rat can also refer to:
- A person who engages in compulsive hoarding
- Peter Pack Rat, a 1984 arcade game
- A packrat parser for parsing expression grammar
- Packrat (Transformers), a fictional character in the Transformers universe
Usage examples of "pack rat".
The Pack Rat could see the fullness of knowledge throbbing behind her eyes, and he wondered whether Kusunda Ikusa yet knew what he had got himself into.
Legend told how once long ago a greedy wizard was transformed into a pack rat by an angry enchantress he had swindled.
It was a nice place full of good old furniture, but in her declining years Granny had become something of a compulsive pack rat and so there were heaps of newspapers and accumulated mail squirreled away everywhere.
The Reverend Wakefield, Roger's late adoptive father, had been both a good amateur historian, and a terrible pack rat.