probe
Pluralprobes
Pluralprobes
- 1An investigation or formal inquiry made to uncover the facts about something.
The senate launched a probe into the failed bank deal.
Reporters demanded a probe after the leaked documents surfaced.
Similarinvestigation, inquiry, examination
Note
Investigations are launched, and so are probes. The noun takes into before its subject: a probe into the cause of the accident. It is the figurative heir of the surgical instrument, feeling its way into a matter as the instrument feels its way into a wound. That picture of careful digging is what the word adds over plain inquiry.
- 2To explore, investigate, or question something closely in order to learn more about it.
Reporters probe deep into government spending every year.
Scientists want to probe the origins of the disease.
Similarinvestigate, explore, examine, delve, scrutinize
Note
The verb comes from Latin probare, "to test, examine, prove," which makes probe a doublet of prove. The noun behind the surgical instrument came separately, from proba. The verb works with or without an object. Henry Hallam could write of the disposition "to probe the legality of all acts of the crown" (1827), yet one can also simply probe further or probe deeper into a subject.
- 3A medical instrument used to explore wounds, organs, and other parts of the body.
The doctor passed a probe along the wound to find the depth of the injury.
A blunt probe is often used to examine a sinus tract without causing damage.
Note
The surgeon's instrument is named for testing. Late Latin proba meant "a proof," so probe and proof are doublets. Spanish names the same tool tienta, from tentar, "to try." Slender and typically blunt-tipped, it gauges a wound's depth and direction without cutting. In surgery, probing means feeling one's way into the body, not opening it.
- 4A small craft sent into space, typically with no one aboard, to collect data and measurements about its surroundings.
The probe entered orbit around Saturn after a seven-year journey.
Engineers lost contact with the probe shortly after it reached the asteroid belt.
Note
This is exploration at a distance. The spacecraft goes where crews do not, and its worth lies in the measurements it sends back. It is a scaled-up cousin of the measuring device: the instrument is launched rather than inserted. Because such craft are usually uncrewed, calling a mission a probe signals that no one is aboard.
- 5A small device, especially an electrode, used to measure or investigate something by penetrating it or being placed in it.
Researchers inserted a fine probe into the cell membrane to record voltage changes.
The temperature probe was calibrated before each reading.
Note
A sensor named for where it sits: inside or against whatever it measures. Its tip goes into soil, a solution or a cell, often as an electrode, and the reading comes back from that spot. Hence everyday compounds like temperature probe. Unlike the labeled molecule, this is a device, not a substance.
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- 8Something that penetrates something else as if to explore it, or that serves to obtain information.
Her careful question was a probe into his real intentions.
The journalist's article worked as a probe into the firm's hidden finances.
Similarinquiry, investigation, exploration, examination
- 9A group of atoms or molecules whose radioactive labeling allows a particular molecule or other structure to be studied.
The labeled probe hybridized to the complementary strand, revealing the gene's position.
Each probe carries a radioactive marker that lets the target molecule be tracked.
Note
The molecular probe works by binding and being traced. A labeled group of atoms or molecules attaches to its target, and the radioactive label reveals where that target is. Probes are built for one specific sequence or structure, as when a labeled strand hybridizes to its complement. Here the word names a substance, not a tool.
- 10A tube attached to an aircraft that fits into the drogue trailed by a tanker aircraft to allow for aerial refueling.
The pilot eased the probe into the trailing drogue to begin the transfer.
A bent probe forced the fighter to abort its mid-air refueling.
Note
Aerial refueling needs two matching parts. The tanker trails the drogue, and the receiving aircraft carries the probe, a rigid tube the pilot steers into it. Once the two engage, they form a sealed coupling, and fuel passes while both aircraft keep flying. The probe is always the receiver's half, so a tanker never "probes."
- 11A fictional instrument that aliens are imagined to use on the humans they abduct.
The film's aliens strapped their captive down and reached for a probe.
She laughed off the abduction story, joking about the dreaded probe.
Note
A stock prop of comedy and science fiction rather than a real instrument, it almost always travels with its adjective: the anal probe. Aliens "do" them, and the joke lies in the routine. "We haven't done any anal probes in a while," muses an alien in Bayard Russell's nonemorecomic (2004). It parodies the surgical instrument, so it belongs in comic or genre writing.
- 12In the game of Go, a move with several possible replies, played to force the opponent to choose and commit to a strategy.
He slipped in a probe before deciding how to build his own framework.
Her probe in the lower right drew out a response that fixed black's shape.
Note
A Go player's move of inquiry: it poses a question on the board and lets the reply shape the plan. Because several answers are possible, whichever one the opponent picks commits them. Only then does the player settle their own strategy. Timing is the point. A probe is played while one's own shape is still open, not after it is fixed.
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Origin
The verb was borrowed from Latin "probare" ("to test, examine, prove"), from "probus" ("good"), making it a doublet of "prove." The noun was borrowed from Late Latin "proba" ("a proof"), also from "probare," and is a doublet of "proof."