coureur de bois

English

Alternative forms

• coureur des bois

Etymology

Borrowed from French coureur des bois, literally “woods runner”.

Noun

coureur de bois (plural coureurs de bois)

1. (historical) A fur trader operating in North America in the seventeenth or eighteenth century without permission from the French authorities.
   • 2011, Colin Woodard, chapter 2, in American Nations, New York: Penguin, →ISBN:

     Those who stayed in New France often fled the fields to take up lives in the wilderness, where they traded for furs with the Indians or simply “went native.” […] In contemporary terms, these woodsmen—or coureurs de bois—were first-generation immigrants to aboriginal societies whose cultures and values they partially assimilated.