browse

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   vegetation such as young shoots, twigs, and leaves that is suitable for animals to eat

   A deer needs to eat twenty pounds of browse every day.

2. 2
   verb

   to eat lightly, try different dishes

   Let's browse the whole menu.

3. 3
   verb

   to look around casually and randomly, without seeking anything in particular

   They browsed the computer directory.

4. 4
   verb

   to feed as in a meadow or pasture

   The animals browsed happily.

5. 5
   verb

   To scan, to casually look through in order to find items of interest, especially without knowledge of what to look for beforehand.

   I'm just browsing around.

6. 6
   verb

   To navigate through hyperlinked documents on a computer, usually with a browser.

   HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.

7. 7
   verb

   To move about while eating parts of plants, especially plants other than pasture, such as shrubs or trees.

   Sheep ranged everywhere under the low cedars. They browsed with noses in the frost, and from all around came the tinkle of tiny bells on the curly-horned rams, and an endless variety of bleats.

8. 8
   verb

   To feed on, as pasture; to pasture on; to graze.

   The fields between / Are dewy-fresh, brows'd by deep-udder'd kine, […]

Etymology

From Middle English browsen, from Old French brouster, broster (“to nibble off buds, sprouts, and bark; browse”), from brost (“a sprout, shoot, bud”), from a Germanic source, perhaps Frankish *brust (“shoot, bud”), from Proto-Germanic *brustiz (“bud, shoot”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrews- (“to swell, sprout”). Cognate with Bavarian Bross, Brosst (“a bud”), Old Saxon brustian (“to sprout”). Doublet of brut, breast, and brush.