ensearch

English

Etymology

From Middle English enserchen, from Old French encerchier. See search.

Verb

ensearch (third-person singular simple present ensearches, present participle ensearching, simple past and past participle ensearched)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To search; to try to find something.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To search for; to seek.
   • 1531, Thomas Elyot, edited by Ernest Rhys, The Boke Named the Governour […] (Everyman’s Library), London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent & Co; New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton & Co, published [1907], →OCLC:

     by all the means you can to ensearch whether there is any meeting intended

   • 1577, Raphaell Holinshed, “The Historie of Irelande […]”, in The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Hunne, →OCLC, folio 1, verso, column 1:

     Yet as naked as at the firſt bluſh it [the work] ſeemeth, if it ſhall ſtande wyth your Honour his pleaſure (whome I take to be an experte Lapidarie) at vacant houres to inſearche it, you ſhall finde therein ſtones of ſuch eſtimatiõ, as are woorthy to be coucht in riche and precious collets.

Alternative forms

• insearch

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “ensearch”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• erenachs, cheenars, archeens, enchaser, enarches