Contrafreeloading

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A behaviour, where, when given a choice, an individual animal will choose a food source which requires effort to obtain instead of that which requires little to no effort. uncountable

    "There is also a free treat option in the puzzle box, a way for the researchers here to measure something called “contrafreeloading.” This term describes a behavior animals demonstrate when they choose to work for a reward rather than just freeloading from readily available food."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of contrafreeload form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"There is also a free treat option in the puzzle box, a way for the researchers here to measure something called “contrafreeloading.” This term describes a behavior animals demonstrate when they choose to work for a reward rather than just freeloading from readily available food."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From contra- + freeloading.

Etymology 2

From contrafreeload + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.