hunt
Noun pluralhunts
Pluralhunts
- 1To search for and pursue wild animals in order to kill them for food or sport, or to search an area of land for such animals.
Indigenous communities have hunted caribou across these lands for generations.
Licensed sportsmen hunt elk in the mountains every fall.
UsageYou hunt deer, go hunting, or hunt for food.
- 2An act or organized outing of pursuing and killing wild animals for food or sport.
The morning hunt yielded two pheasants and a hare.
Wolves work together during the hunt, chasing a deer until it tires.
- 3To search carefully or persistently in an effort to find something.
Detectives hunted for clues among the wreckage of the car.
Reporters hunt for stories wherever they can find them.
UsageUsually hunt for something, and you can hunt all over a place for it.
Similarsearch, look, seek, rummage, forage
Note
Here the chase has become any search: for shells on a beach, for evidence, for a road through the pines. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare instead uses after, setting one man hunting after honor and another after love.
- 4To chase or drive a person or animal, typically to capture or expel them.
The angry crowd hunted the pickpocket through the market until a guard caught him.
Bounty hunters hunt fugitives across state lines for the reward.
UsageUse hunt someone down for pursuing someone to find, capture, or kill them; hunted from a place means driven out of it.
- 5An effort to find a person or thing, typically one that is thorough or goes on for a long time.
Police have launched a nationwide hunt for the escaped prisoner.
Her hunt for an affordable apartment dragged on all summer.
Similarsearch, manhunt, quest, pursuit
Note
News reports lean on this sense: police launch a hunt, and the hunt for a missing person continues. What is sought follows for, and compounds name the everyday kinds: a job hunt, house hunting, a treasure hunt, a manhunt. It keeps the chase and patience of the hunter's meaning without the killing, which is why it suits a search that is thorough or long rather than a quick look.
Less common meanings
- 6To use or manage dogs, horses, and similar animals in the course of a hunt.
Like a conductor guiding an orchestra, cueing each section at the right moment.
Skilled huntsmen hunt their hounds with quiet signals and a few calls.
He hunted the pack across three counties during the long season.
Note
Here the object is the animal doing the work, not the animal being chased. You hunt a pony or a pack of hounds the way you would ride or handle them. Joseph Addison, writing in July 1711, has his narrator praise Will Wimble, who "hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country." So "Did you hunt that pony?" asks whether it was ridden in the field, not whether it was shot.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- The passage is by Joseph Addison alone, in The Spectator, No. 108; its narrator describes Will Wimble. gutenberg.org
- The passage was published in July 1711. gutenberg.org
- The quoted wording occurs in the description of Will Wimble, with capitalization modernized. gutenberg.org
- 7A formal organization devoted to hunting, or the members who belong to it.
The hunt gathered at the manor before riding out at dawn.
Several local hunts merged to share the cost of their kennels.
- 8A pack of dogs kept and trained for the pursuit of game.
- 9To oscillate unstably, swinging back and forth around a target value instead of settling, as a governor or control mechanism does under varying load.
- 10In change ringing, to move a bell, or of a bell to move, one place at a time up and down through the ringing order.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Old English huntian ("to hunt") came from *huntōn, a Proto-West Germanic verb meaning "to hunt, capture," which possibly goes back to *ḱent- ("to catch, seize") in Proto-Indo-European. It became Middle English hunten. Related Old English words include hūþ ("plunder, booty, prey") and hentan ("to catch, seize").