Meaning & use
feral rat
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Meanings
nouncountable
A rat that lives free in the wild, especially one descended from domestic or laboratory rats.
Grammar: Countable: use a/a with one rat and add -s for more than one.
Patterns
- a feral rat
- feral rats
- a colony of feral rats
Feral rats had chewed through the cables under the house.
The city traps feral rats in the alleys behind restaurants.
Unlike a pet rat, a feral rat avoids people and bites if cornered.
nouncountablefigurativedisapproving
Used figuratively for a person seen as sneaky, dirty, or living on the edges of society.
Grammar: Figurative and insulting; it describes a person, so it is countable.
Patterns
- call someone a feral rat
- treat someone like a feral rat
The columnist called the scammers feral rats feeding on the elderly.
He felt the reporters were hunting him like feral rats.
Word forms
| plural | feral rats |
|---|
Common combinations
- a colony of feral rats
- A colony of feral rats had taken over the abandoned warehouse.
- infestation of feral rats
- Health officers reported an infestation of feral rats near the market.
- trap feral rats
- The council hired a team to trap feral rats in the park.
- feral rat population
- Mild winters have boosted the feral rat population.
- carry disease like a feral rat
- Some strays carry disease like a feral rat and should not be handled.
Synonyms and how they differ
- wild rat
- Neutral and simply means a rat living in nature; "feral rat" stresses that it or its ancestors were once domesticated.
- brown rat
- Names one species (Rattus norvegicus) rather than describing how it lives.
- vermin
- A collective, strongly negative word for pests in general, not a single rat.
Opposites
Word family
- feral adjective
- Describing an animal that has returned to a wild state after domestication.
- ferality noun
- The state or quality of being feral.
Commonly confused: feral rat or wild rat? feral rat or mouse?
feral rat vs wild rat
"Wild rat" is any rat living freely; "feral rat" specifically suggests descent from tame or lab animals.
feral rat vs mouse
A mouse is a smaller, different rodent; learners sometimes use the words interchangeably, but they are separate animals.
Practice
Which sentence uses "feral rat" correctly?
Choose one answer.
"Feral" means domesticated animals living wild again, so B is correct. A describes a pet, C is wrong because the phrase is countable, and D wrongly uses it for a group of birds.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “feral rat”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.