hunt
/hʌnt/ verb, noun, proper noun
- verb (ambitransitive) To find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport. “State Wildlife Management areas often offer licensed hunters the opportunity to hunt on public lands.”
- verb (ambitransitive) To try to find something; search (for). “The little girl was hunting for shells on the beach.”
- verb (transitive) To drive; to chase; with down, from, away, etc. “to hunt down a criminal”
- verb (transitive) To use or manage (dogs, horses, etc.) in hunting. “Did you hunt that pony last week?”
- verb (transitive) To use or traverse in pursuit of game. “He hunts the woods, or the country.”
- verb (bell-ringing, transitive) To move or shift the order of (a bell) in a regular course of changes.
- verb (bell-ringing, intransitive) To shift up and down in order regularly.
- verb (engineering, intransitive) To be in a state of instability of movement or forced oscillation, as a governor which has a large movement of the balls for small change of load, an arc-lamp clutch mechanism which moves rapidly up and down with variations of current, etc.; also, to seesaw, as a pair of alternators working in parallel.
- noun The act of hunting.
- noun A hunting expedition.
- noun An organization devoted to hunting, or the people belonging to it.
- noun (collective) A pack of hunting dogs.
- proper noun An English surname originating as an occupation for a hunter (for game, birds etc).
- proper noun (rare) A male given name transferred from the surname.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Knox County, Ohio, United States.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Kerr County, Texas, United States.
- proper noun Former name of McFarland, California.
Synonyms
Holman Hunt William Holman Hunt Richard Morris Hunt Leigh Hunt James Henry Leigh Hunt hunt club search hunting run hunt down track down hound trace
Etymology
From Middle English hunten, from Old English huntian (“to hunt”), from Proto-West Germanic *huntōn (“to hunt, capture”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱent- (“to catch, seize”). Related to Old High German hunda (“booty”), Gothic 𐌷𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (hunþs, “body of captives”), Old English hūþ (“plunder, booty, prey”), Old English hentan (“to catch, seize”). More at hent, hint.
In some areas read as a collective form of hound by folk etymology.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To search for or follow after, as game or wild animals; to chase; to pursue for the purpose of catching or killing; to follow with dogs or guns for sport or exercise; as, to hunt a deer.
- verb To search diligently after; to seek; to pursue; to follow; --often with out or up; as, to hunt up the facts; to hunt out evidence.
- verb To follow the chase; to go out in pursuit of game; to course with hounds.
- verb To seek; to pursue; to search; --with for or after.
Etymology [AS. huntian to hunt; cf. hentan to follow, pursue, Goth. hin (in comp.) to seize. sq. root36. Cf. Hent.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “hunt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details