detect

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈtɛkt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛkt

From Latin detectus, perfect passive participle of detegere (“to uncover or disclose”), from de- + tegere (“to cover”); see tegument, tile, thatch.

detect (third-person singular simple present detects, present participle detecting, simple past and past participle detected)

1. To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing.
   • 1960 June, “Talking of Trains: New B.R. research laboratory”, in Trains Illustrated, page 329:

     Diesel maintenance schedules are benefiting from work done on the magnificent Hilger & Watts electronic spectrograph for oil analysis, which detects minute quantities of metals in samples of used lubricating oil; [...].

• detection
• detective
• detector

• → Catalan: detectar
• → French: détecter
  • → Dutch: detecteren
• → Portuguese: detectar, detetar
• → Romanian: detecta
• → Spanish: detectar

• discover
• find
• stumble upon

detect (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Detected.

Back-formation from detective.

detect (third-person singular simple present detects, present participle detecting, simple past and past participle detected)

1. (intransitive, informal) To work or solve cases as a detective.
   • 1926, Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness (Lord Peter Wimsey; 2), T. Fisher Unwin, →ISBN, page 105:

     Parker would in all likelihood have done so; he was paid to detect and to do nothing else, and neither his natural gifts nor his education (at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School) prompted him to stray into side-tracks at the beck of an ill-regulated imagination.

   • 1978, Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, Michael Turner, transl., Tintin in America (The Adventures of Tintin), Egmont, published 2012, →ISBN, page 45:

     Let me introduce myself: Mike MacAdam, hotel detective. / H-how d-’you do? / Mind if I begin detecting?

   • 1991, Hillary Waugh, Hillary Waugh's Guide to Mysteries & Mystery Writing Novel, Writer's Digest Books, →ISBN, page 11:

     In a detective story, a detective detects; an active effort is made to determine who committed a given crime, and detecting the identity of a criminal could not be done until there were detectives.

   • 2019 May 9, Ben Kenigsberg, “'Pokémon Detective Pikachu' Review: A Cat and (Electric) Mouse Game”, in The New York Times‎, archived from the original on 2022-12-17:

     That aversion is tested when he teams up with Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds), his father's detecting partner, after the father appears to have been killed in an accident.

• “detect”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “detect”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “detect”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
• “detect”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

• dectet