seeking

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of seek.

   Refugees seeking safety crossed the border in great numbers.

   He spent years seeking the truth about his family's past.

   Note

   The participle carries every sense of seek: looking for something (De Anza "seeking a site for the presidio" in Carey McWilliams's North from Mexico, 1948), asking for it, or striving after it. Followed by to and a verb, as in seeking to cut costs, it simply means trying. Some readers object to that use, and plain trying is the safer choice. The same spelling also serves as the noun for a search.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of searching for something; a quest to find what one is after.

   Her endless seeking after approval shaped every choice she made.

   The seeking of spiritual peace drew many travelers to the monastery.

   Similarpursuit, quest, search, hunt

   Note

   Built plainly from seek plus -ing, the noun can still be counted and made plural. Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine of 1873 reports a company's "long and anxious seekings for a location," where the plural names separate searches rather than one ongoing activity. The singular usually takes after or of (seeking after approval). The plural, paired with for, counts the attempts one by one.

3. 3
   adjectivein compounds

   Trying to find or obtain a particular thing, which is named by the word joined to it, as in heat-seeking or pleasure-seeking.

   The pilot released a burst of flares to throw off the heat-seeking missile.

   Pleasure-seeking tourists crowd the island's beach bars every summer.

   Note

   A combining form rather than a free-standing adjective: it needs a noun in front of it, and the pair is hyphenated, as in heat-seeking and pleasure-seeking. The first element always names the target of the search, so the pattern extends easily to new targets. It is not compared. A missile is heat-seeking or it is not, and nothing is more heat-seeking than another.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3