search

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English

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Etymology

From Middle English serchen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman sercher, Old French cerchier, from Late Latin circō, circāre (“to circle; go around; search for”), from Latin circa, circus. Not related to German suchen, which is cognate with English seek.

Pronunciation

Noun

search (countable and uncountable, plural searches)

  1. An attempt to find something.
    With only five minutes until we were meant to leave, the search for the keys started in earnest.
    • 2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, New York Times, retrieved 31 October 2012:
      At least eight people died, and officials expressed deep concerns that the toll would rise as more searches of homes were carried out.
  2. The act of searching in general.
    Search is a hard problem for computers to solve efficiently.
    • 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
      Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet. Perhaps we assume that our name, address and search preferences will be viewed by some unseen pair of corporate eyes, probably not human, and don't mind that much.

Translations

Verb

search (third-person singular simple present searches, present participle searching, simple past and past participle searched)

  1. (transitive) To look in (a place) for something.
    I searched the garden for the keys and found them in the vegetable patch.
  2. (intransitive, followed by "for") To look thoroughly.
    The police are searching for evidence in his flat.
    • 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:
      It sufficeth that they have once with care and fairness sifted the matter as far as they could, and searched into all the particulars.
    • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC:
      He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. […] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again […] she found her mother standing up before the seat on which she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes, and her father by her side.
    • 2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68:
      Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.
  3. (transitive, now rare) To look for, seek.
  4. (transitive, obsolete) To probe or examine (a wound).
  5. (obsolete) To examine; to try; to put to the test.

Conjugation

Conjugation of search
infinitive (to) search
present tense past tense
1st-person singular search searched
2nd-person singular search, searchest† searched, searchedst†
3rd-person singular searches, searcheth† searched
plural search
subjunctive search searched
imperative search —
participles searching searched

†Archaic or obsolete.

Synonyms

Translations

Derived terms

from verb and noun

See also

References

  1. ^ Hall, Joseph Sargent (1942 March 2) “1. The Vowel Sounds of Stressed Syllables”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § 12, page 42.

Anagrams

Chinese

Etymology

From English search.

Pronunciation

Verb

search

  1. (Hong Kong Cantonese) to search on the Internet; to google

See also

  • (clipping) ser (soe1)
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