cave dweller

noun

1. a person whose home is a cave.
2. a prehistoric person who lived in caves.
3. Facetious. a person who lives in an apartment building or the like in a large city.

Word History and Origins

Origin of cave dweller¹

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

But new evidence from the oldest known DNA from the British Isles shows the two sets of cave dwellers had dramatically different ancestry.

From Science Magazine

Posting videos of his projects made him a star in a growing subgenre of people pretending to live like cave dwellers and building things out of raw materials with their bare hands.

From New York Times

“A stranger comes to town and changes everything” is likely a story first told by cave dwellers.

From New York Times

This year, for the first time, cave dirt yielded DNA once housed in the nucleus of human cells, and researchers used such “dirt DNA” to reconstruct the identity of cave dwellers around the world.

From Science Magazine

One character says: “Our insight into death has not changed. Einstein knew as little about death as did the first cave dwellers.”

From New York Times