Definition of "hunt"

hunt

/hʌnt/

verb
third-person singular simple present hunts, present participle hunting, simple past and past participle hunted
1. (transitive, intransitive) To find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.
  Quotations
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Genesis 27:5–passageEsau went to the field to hunt for venison.
  Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, / Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
  1835, Alfred Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, page 100
  2010, Backyard deer hunting: converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound, page 10
2. (transitive, intransitive) To try to find something; search (for).
  Quotations
  He after honour hunts, I after love.
  c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]
  I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
  1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
  My idea of retirement was to hunt seashells, play golf, and do a lot of walking.
  2004, Prill Boyle, Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women, page 119
  What kind of woman came to an island and stayed there through a violent storm and then got up the next morning to hunt seashells? She had fine, delicate features with high cheekbones and the greenest eyes he'd ever seen.
  2011, Ann Major, Nobody's Child
3. (transitive) To drive; to chase; with down, from, away, etc.
4. (transitive) To use or manage (dogs, horses, etc.) in hunting.
  Quotations
  He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country.
  1711 July 15 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “WEDNESDAY, July 4, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 104; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853
5. (transitive) To use or traverse in pursuit of game.
6. (bell-ringing, transitive) To move or shift the order of (a bell) in a regular course of changes.
7. (bell-ringing, intransitive) To shift up and down in order regularly.
8. (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.
  Quotations
  […] after which the inertia of the camera causes the motor to hunt with fluctuating speed.
  1995, Bernard Wilkie, Special Effects in Television, page 174
noun
plural hunts
1. The act of hunting.
  Quotations
  Through male bonding, the subculture of the hunt caught up in the mystique of the chase, the hunting party became a military force, and men discovered that they need not stop at defense: they could go out to hunt for other people's wealth.
  1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 134
2. A hunting expedition.
3. An organization devoted to hunting, or the people belonging to it.
4. A pack of hunting dogs.

Definition of "hunt"

hunt

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

noun

Quotations