Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To discover or ascertain the existence, presence, or fact of.
- v. To discern (something hidden or subtle): detected a note of sarcasm in the remark.
- v. To learn something hidden and often improper about: detected the manager in a lie.
- v. Electronics To demodulate.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To uncover; lay bare; expose; show.
- To discover; find out; ascertain the existence, presence, or fact of: as, to detect an error in an account; to detect the presence of arsenic.
- To find out the action or character of; discover a fault or wrong in; unveil, as a person: as, to detect a man in the act of cheating; to detect a hypocrite.
- To reveal the guilt or alleged guilt of; inform against; complain of; accuse.
- Synonyms To find, ascertain, descry, make out, ferret out, penetrate.
Wiktionary
- v. to discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Detected.
- v. To uncover; to discover; to find out; to bring to light
- v. To inform against; to accuse.
WordNet 3.0
- v. discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of
Etymologies
- Middle English detecten, from Latin dētegere, dētēct-, to uncover : dē-, de- + tegere, to cover; see (s)teg- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“And in addition the appearances in the bone, which you call detect by the sight, you should make inquiry as to all these particulars”
“The thinly cut meat and its inconsequential roll have next to no flavor; the only taste we can detect is that of the Belgian cheese.”
The Washington Post: Mussel Bar: Wiedmaier's latest is a letdown, bar none
“You will probably respond by saying that what you could detect from the artifact was that true intelligence was involved at some unspecified position in the causal chain.”
“I went to my Firefox view encoding page and discovered that my "auto detect" is listed as off, instead of being on.”
“It's self-activated, self-starting, very hard to detect, that is spread, frankly, throughout much of the world.”
“Individually, components that in small amounts would be hard to detect, which is why airport security expert Rafi Ron says it would be much more effective to search for suspicious people instead of suspicious liquids.”
“Previous CNN investigations in Afghanistan have uncovered al Qaeda training videos and documents giving step by step instructions in using similar household and industrial chemicals to create bombs, individually, components that in small amounts, would be hard to detect, which is why airport security expert Rafi Ron says it would be much more effective to search for suspicious people instead of suspicious liquids.”
“Agree on detect, that is the next part of the puzzle.”
“The idea is to have my PC automaticall detect the PSP being connected and to run a program to be displayed on the PSP.”
“Mammographer-in-training Naomi Rico says the best way to detect is to go to your local physician, saying, breast cancer could be a very difficult thing to feel, some won't feel it at all.”
Lists
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Academic Vocabulary
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abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3092 more...
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Words related to knowledge
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revelation, eureka, awakening, idea, sapient, astute, canny, intelligent, wise, sharp, shrewd, informed and 466 more...
jeen0809 He detected a smile on his girlfriend's face. Apr 14, 2007