search
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Looking thoroughly to find something or someone.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
surchIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɝtʃ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The activity of looking thoroughly in order to find something or someone
The act of searching in general.
An attempt to find something.
verb
transitive
To put a phrase into a search engine, especially one besides Google.
transitive
To look in (a place) for something.
intransitivefollowed by "for"
To look thoroughly.
Inquire into
Search or seek
Subject to a search
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The activity of looking thoroughly in order to find something or someone
Used this way, search is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It quietly approves while staying precise.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Careful and exacting
- Usage feel
- Precise and approving
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use search
- “A thorough search of the ledgers revealed nothing.”noun
- “His search for a move that would avoid checkmate was unsuccessful.”noun
- “The police are searching for clues.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Someone making a search or inquiry.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A source language consisting of procedural operators that invoke functions to be executed.
A mission to discover something.
A party of people to search for someone.
A warrant authorizing law enforcement officials to search for objects or people involved in the commission of a crime and to produce them in court.
A rescue mission to search for survivors and to rescue them.
Large metallic blue-green beetle that preys on caterpillars.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
An empirical search for knowledge.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.