camp follower

noun

plural camp followers

1

: a civilian who follows a military unit to attend or exploit military personnel

The first "armies"—actually collections of knights, armed peasants and camp followers—resembled outings more than columns on the march.

—David Kahn

At first there was little fighting and much cavorting with camp followers resulting in an outbreak of syphilis in Naples that decimated the army …

—Wayne Biddle

2

: someone who follows a well-known individual or group (such as a politician or sports team)

… the players have a certain contempt for the fans, abusing the camp followers, called "Baseball Annies," and refusing to sign autographs for the kids.

—Robert Lipsyte

All during the campaign in the constituencies, I was struck by the kindness and decency of citizens who had every reason to be bored with politicians and their journalist camp followers.

—Bernard Nossiter

3

: a disciple or follower who is not part of the main body of members or adherents

Each group will have … its camp followers trying to ingratiate themselves, its bored veterans who secretly dream of escape.

—Ken Early

Examples of camp follower in a Sentence

the famous boxer and his camp followers

Recent Examples on the Web

The victims are local teenagers, seized in roundups, while the courtesans, whose ghastly storytelling each night inspires the action, are like camp followers, the guards collaborators. —David Wingrave, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025

The women in the sketch were part of a controversial group known as camp followers: wives, widows, runaways and others who marched with the Continental Army. —Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2024

Republican politicians have been calling on Biden to curb inflation, but there isn’t much a president can really do except raise taxes, which of course the GOP and their Democratic camp follower Joe Manchin oppose. —Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 27 July 2022

As an insurgent, Mr. Trump arrived in Washington without the camp followers of brand-name lobbyists and insiders who set up shop with each new administration. —New York Times, 8 Dec. 2019

There’s the near-noirish play between dark and light captured by Tripe in an Indian temple or the Yvonne De Carlo expression (speaking of almost noirish) on the face of a camp follower in a Fenton Crimean War photograph. —Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 6 July 2018

Her mother, Sophie Delaborde, the daughter of a bird seller on the Rue de Rivoli, was a camp follower of the Napoleonic troops in Madrid. —Benita Eisler, WSJ, 8 June 2018

Suspicion quickly flared into insurgency, and when the British pulled out of Kabul in 1842 with a convoy of 16,000 troops and camp followers, only a single survivor (the assistant surgeon William Brydon) reached the border town of Jalalabad alive. —Jonah Blank, Foreign Affairs, 19 Aug. 2011

Word History

First Known Use

1784, in the meaning defined at sense 1