searching

Pluralsearchings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of search.

   Rescue teams are searching the mountainside for survivors.

   Searching through a box of old letters, she found a photograph.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty, as participle and as gerund (Searching takes patience). It keeps both of the verb's constructions. Transitively, the place comes straight after (searching the house). Intransitively, it usually takes through or for (searching through old letters). An older transitive use took the thing sought as its object, as in searching the truth. That now sounds archaic; today you search for it.

2. 2
   adjective

   Examining something closely and penetratingly, often in a probing or severe way.

   The panel put several searching questions to the candidate about his record.

   Under her searching gaze, he began to fidget and look away.

   Similarprobing, penetrating, piercing, keen, sharp

   Oppositesuperficial, casual, cursory

   Note

   Here the probing is felt by whoever receives it: a searching glance, as in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899), or searching criticism. The word stretches to weather, too. Harold Bindloss writes in 1910 of "a searching rain" that soaks a man to the skin. The common thread is something that gets past defenses, whether a person's composure or an overcoat.

3. 3
   adjective

   Thorough; carried out completely and carefully, leaving nothing unexamined.

   The committee conducted a searching review of the company's finances.

   A searching inspection of the factory revealed several safety violations.

   Similarthorough, exhaustive, rigorous, comprehensive, probing

   Oppositecursory, superficial, perfunctory

   Note

   A word for inquiries rather than people: it attaches to investigations, reviews, examinations and tests. R. A. Millikan wrote in 1916 that Einstein's photoelectric equation had been subjected to "very searching tests." It grades freely (more searching, most searching). Where the penetrating sense describes a look or remark aimed at someone, this one describes a process that leaves nothing unchecked.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An act or instance of looking or hunting for someone or something.

   His restless spiritual searchings took him from one monastery to another across three continents.

   A long searching through the archives finally turned up the missing deed.

   Similarquest, hunt

   Note

   As a noun the word leans toward the inner and the long-drawn-out. A song can be a serious searching for answers and understanding, and Mark Oppenheimer in the New York Times wrote of Antony Flew's lifelong intellectual searchings. The plural searchings is natural in this abstract use, naming a succession of inquiries over time. Compared with the noun search, searching puts the weight on the effort and the process rather than a single event.

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