detect

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of

   The scientist detected high levels of lead in the drinking water.

2. 2
   verb

   To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing.

   Cantharidin, although readily decomposed by chemical agents, is so permanent in the body that it has been detected in the corpse of a cat eighty-four days after death.

3. 3
   verb

   To work or solve cases as a detective.

   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.

4. 4
   adj

   Detected.

Etymology

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