Dictionary

footganger en · NOUN

Etymology

Perhaps from Dutch or Afrikaans voetganger (“pedestrian”, literally “foot-goer”), or a partial calque of German Fußgänger (“pedestrian”), equivalent to foot + ganger (“goer, walker, stepper”).

Meanings

1. A juvenile locust or grasshopper while in its wingless or flightless phase.
   • We passed several swarms of locusts in the footganger stage; but owing to the lateness of their appearance the damage they effected was slight, though we met many people coming from the west, whose crops had been utterly destroyed. 1904, Mark Sykes, John Hugh Smith, Edward Granville Browne, Dar-ul-Islam: A Record of a Journey Through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey:
   • Midway between Bloomfontein and Kimberley, while riding with Major Beresford, of the South African Constabulary, at the foot of some low hills in the Karoo bush, I came across great numbers of the footgangers. 1902, Journal of the Society of Arts:

Forms