Pronunciations (2)
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/dɪˈtɛkt/
Pronunciation notes
- UK
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dɪˈtɛkt
Pronunciation notes
- GB
Verb
To discover or notice, especially by careful search, examination, or probing.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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The forensic examiners detected tiny traces of the poison on the suspect's gloves.
On entering the room, I immediately detected the smell of gas.
More examples (2)
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.
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; [...].
To work or solve cases as a detective.
Usage- Informal
- Intransitive
- Examples
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More examples (1)
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.
Let me introduce myself: Mike MacAdam, hotel detective. / H-how d-’you do? / Mind if I begin detecting?
More examples (2)
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.
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.
Adjective
Detected.
Usage- not-comparable
- Obsolete
Verb
discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of by perception with the eyes
- Examples
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She detected high levels of lead in her drinking water
We found traces of lead in the paint