browse
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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.
Pronunciation
Verb
browse (third-person singular simple present browses, present participle browsing, simple past and past participle browsed)
- 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.
- I stopped in several bookstores to browse.
- To move about while sampling, such as with food or products on display.
- (transitive, computing) To navigate through hyperlinked documents on a computer, usually with a browser.
- (intransitive, of an animal) To move about while eating parts of plants, especially plants other than pasture, such as shrubs or trees.
- (archaic, transitive) To feed on, as pasture; to pasture on; to graze.
- 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Gardener’s Daughter; or, The Pictures”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 21:
- The fields between / Are dewy-fresh, brows'd by deep-udder'd kine, […]
Derived terms
Translations
scan, casually look through
|
move about while sampling
move about while eating parts of plants
|
Noun
browse (countable and uncountable, plural browses)
- (uncountable) Young shoots and twigs.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- And with their horned feet the greene gras wore, / The whiles their Gotes upon the brouzes fedd […]
- 1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
- Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, / On browz, and corn, and flowery meadows feed.
- (uncountable) Fodder for cattle and other animals.
- (countable) The act of browsing through something.
- I had a browse in the old bookshop.
- (countable) That which one browses through; something to read.
- 1899, Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.:
- Here he buried himself in a close-printed, thickish volume which had been his chosen browse for some time.
Further reading
- “browse”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “browse”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
Verb
browse (imperative brows, present browser, past browsede, past participle browset)
Pronunciation
Audio: (file)
Verb
browse
- inflection of browsen:
Pronunciation
Audio: (file)
Verb
browse
- inflection of browsen:
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