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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hunt.

To find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/hʌnt//hʊnt/Northern-England
  1. To find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.

    ambitransitive
    State Wildlife Management areas often offer licensed hunters the opportunity to hunt on public lands.
    Her uncle will go out and hunt for deer, now that it is open season.
  2. To try to find something; search (for).

    ambitransitive
    The little girl was hunting for shells on the beach.
    The police are hunting for evidence.
  3. To drive; to chase; with down, from, away, etc.

    transitive
    to hunt down a criminal
    He was hunted from the parish.
  4. To use or manage (dogs, horses, etc.) in hunting.

    transitive
    Did you hunt that pony last week?
  5. To use or traverse in pursuit of game.

    transitive
    He hunts the woods, or the country.
  6. To move or shift the order of (a bell) in a regular course of changes.

    transitive
  7. To shift up and down in order regularly.

    intransitive
  8. 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.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English hunten, from Old English huntian (“to hunt”), from Proto-West Germanic *huntōn (“to hunt, capture”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱent- (“to catch, seize”). Related to Old High German hunda (“booty”), Gothic 𐌷𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (hunþs, “body of captives”), Old English hūþ (“plunder, booty, prey”), Old English hentan (“to catch, seize”). More at hent, hint. In some areas read as a collective form of hound by folk etymology.

noun/hʌnt//hʊnt/Northern-England
  1. The act of hunting.

  2. A hunting expedition.

  3. An organization devoted to hunting, or the people belonging to it.

  4. A pack of hunting dogs.

    collective
Where this word comes from

From Middle English hunten, from Old English huntian (“to hunt”), from Proto-West Germanic *huntōn (“to hunt, capture”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱent- (“to catch, seize”). Related to Old High German hunda (“booty”), Gothic 𐌷𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (hunþs, “body of captives”), Old English hūþ (“plunder, booty, prey”), Old English hentan (“to catch, seize”). More at hent, hint. In some areas read as a collective form of hound by folk etymology.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.