search (n.)

  1. the activity of looking thoroughly in order to find something or someone

    [ Syn: hunt , hunting ]

  2. an investigation seeking answers; a thorough search of the ledgers revealed nothing; the outcome justified the search'

  3. an operation that determines whether one or more of a set of items has a specified property; they wrote a program to do a table lookup

    [ Syn: lookup ]

  4. the examination of alternative hypotheses; his search for a move that would avoid checkmate was unsuccessful'

  5. boarding and inspecting a ship on the high seas; right of search'

    search (v.)

  1. try to locate or discover, or try to establish the existence of; The police are searching for clues; They are searching for the missing man in the entire county

    [ Syn: seek , look for ]

  2. search or seek; We looked all day and finally found the child in the forest; Look elsewhere for the perfect gift!

    [ Syn: look ]

  3. inquire into; the students had to research the history of the Second World War for their history project; He searched for information on his relatives on the web; Scientists are exploring the nature of consciousness

    [ Syn: research , explore ]

  4. subject to a search; The police searched the suspect; We searched the whole house for the missing keys'

The dictionary is based on the WordNet Electronic Lexical Database.
WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2011 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.