Primary
''search'' ⚬｜Definition｜1st｜20260511125519-00-⌔
search - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
search (countable and uncountable, plural searches)
- An attempt to find something.
- ✤ Synonym: sweep
- ✤ With only five minutes until we were meant to leave, the search for the keys started in earnest.
- ✤ At least eight people died, and officials expressed deep concerns that the toll would rise as more searches of homes were carried out.1
- The act of searching in general.
- ✤ * Search is a hard problem for computers to solve efficiently.*
- ✤ 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.2
Verb
search (third-person singular simple present searches, present participle searching, simple past and past participle searched)
- (transitive) To look in (a place) for something.
- ✤ I searched the garden for the keys and found them in the vegetable patch.
- (intransitive, followed by “for”) To look thoroughly.
- ✤ The police are searching for evidence in his flat.
- ✤ It sufficeth that they have once with care and fairness sifted the matter as far as they could, and searched into all the particulars.3
- ✤ 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.4
- ✤ 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.5
- (transitive, now rare) To look for, seek.
- (transitive) To put a phrase into a search engine, especially one besides Google.
- ✤ I searched “Paris Hilton” and found lots of unflattering stories.
- (transitive, obsolete) To probe or examine (a wound).
- ✤ Now torne we to the xj kynges that retorned vnto a cyte that hyghte Sorhaute/the whiche cyte was within kynge Vryens/and ther they refresshed hem as wel as they myght/and made leches serche theyr woundys and sorowed gretely for the dethe of her peple (please add an English translation of this quotation)9
- ✤ Now to the bottome dost thou search my wound.10
- ✤ Thus when they all had sorowed their fill,/They softly gan to search his griesly wownd […].11
- ✤ His wife perceiving him to droope and languish away, entreated him she might leasurely search and neerely view the quality of his disease […].12
- ✤ (please add an English translation of this quotation)
- (obsolete) To examine; to try; to put to the test.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English serchen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman sercher, Old French cerchier, from Late Latin circō, ,circāre (“to circle; go around; search for”), from circus. Unrelated to German suchen, which is cognate with English seek.
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ᯤ)
Link to original Footnotes
2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, New York Times, retrieved 31 October 2012: ↩
2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama’s once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18: ↩
1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC: ↩
1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC: ↩
2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68: ↩
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩
1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 34:11: ↩
1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a] nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a] nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC: ↩
1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “xvj”, in Le Morte Darthur, book I: ↩
c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]: ↩
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩
1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 35, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩
Hall, Joseph Sargent (2 March 1942), “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. ↩
Dobson, E[ric] J. (1957), English pronunciation 1500-1700 , second edition, volume II: Phonology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1968, →OCLC, § 8, page 473: “Search has ę̄ in Levins, Bullokar (beside ĕ), Gil (1619 edition), and Cooper (followed by Aickin), and ĕ in Gil (1621 edition), Hodges, Price, Poole, Cocker, Brown, and RS.” ↩
Secondary
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