What is the difference between seek and find

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 10 years, 3 months ago. Active 4 years ago. Viewed 63k times. Improve this question. Are you perhaps looking at this from the perspective of hard drives?

This is going to have very different meaning if you're talking about general use of those words or those words as they apply to data lookup on an HD. I'm looking at this from all perspective, I've seen seek being use sometime and search some other time, so I was wondering if they can be used the same way. Add a comment. But would If we search for satisfaction be ungrammatical in this case?

The author tells us it is found in his God's sacrifice. Personally, I'd prefer seek , but I'm not sure why I do, perhaps it is only dictated by euphony. All things which are notoriously difficult to find or seek in real life.

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Viewed 24k times. If native speakers say seek food , and search for food ; what is the fundamental difference between the two? Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Seek has an element of need and single-mindedness while search for is more objective and task-oriented. Contrast heat-seeking missile and its possible alternative heat-searching missile. To begin with I would suggest that searching for is a far more intense activity than seeking.

My wife has gone shopping, she is seeking looking for a new pair of shoes having only 99 existing pairs. I cannot find my passport, and I have spent the day searching the house for it.

Clearly the second is a rather more urgent activity than the former. There is then the basic difference that seek takes as its direct object the thing that is being sought, whilst the direct object of search is a place, necessitating the addition of for to accommodate the item as indirect.

Mari-LouA To me searching suggests a more desperate uninterrupted activity, whereas seeking is more akin to keeping an eye out for. That is the extreme difference, but clearly there is overlap. But they are not direct synonyms. It's interesting how the most upvoted answer Chenmunka's is at odds with the OED and the other answers I don't think there is a difference, apart from etymology and non-synonymous meanings.

Water seeks the lowest level, it does not search for the lowest level. You seek a college education, you don't search for one. You can search a forest for your lost watch, you cannot seek a forest for your lost watch.

Both mean "to try to find". Other than that, you are talking about customary or preferred usages. Show 20 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. For example: search the room for food "the room" is a location and is the object of the search.

Improve this answer. Thomas Thomas 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. This is the real answer. If one was searching food, you'd be looking for something within food. There is an implied " searching food [to find what? As in, it's the answer to the referenced question.

It's not the answer to the OP's question: Why is search for different from seek? It is true that "search for food" is grammatical, but only because "for food" together is a grammatical modifying clause. Yes, the question is confusing "Search" with "Search for", as noted these are not the same. To give an example illustrating this answer, you search the desert for water , or search for water in the desert , but you seek water in the desert or seek in the desert for water.

Add a comment. Fundamentally, it comes down to knowing what is out there. A couple of examples: He searches for the truth. He seeks the truth. Similarly: He searches for food. He seeks food. The latter implies a quest for sustenance, be it physical food or food for the mind.

Chenmunka Chenmunka Instead, you're saying this is true for the person who searches for something. My impression is that it has to do with breadth. Search does a broad scan of the environment, whereas a seek is a methodical depth-first search, i. Overall I agree with Andreas. All of these examples seem so contrived to me.

You 'seek' a cure for cancer but do not search for it? I'm not convinced. Likewise, all these examples about 'seeking' things that might not exist neglect the extremely common topic of searching the Internet or some website. The target may not exist, but no one prefers 'seek' here. Either this answer is incorrect or it depends heavily on context. When a hard disk moves into position to read a particular sector, it's called a seek. Certainly, the hark disk is not unsure whether the location exists or not.

Show 12 more comments. Search and Rescue organization execute a search pattern looking for a known object in a large but usually bounded space by conducting a disciplined and thorough pass through the space search algorithm programming terminology for a method of locating a known object in a collection ; walk through a search area; heat- seek ing missile missile that locks onto a heat source and pursues it ; seek and destroy get in, locate, eliminate, get out immediately ; and seek time of hard drives time taken to locate a known location on a hard drive.

Lawrence Lawrence I like this. To me, "seek" implies some kind of focused deduction is involved. Again, many of these examples seem contrived and based more on common usage than any kind of definition. You wouldn't say a 'seek and rescue' mission because that is not common parlance, any more than you would say 'search and save', even though I doubt you are arguing 'rescue' and 'save' are not interchangeable here.

Are you claiming that if I asked, "What is the search party seeking? However Search and destroy and seek and destroy are used interchangeably. No actual "seeking" or "searching" is involved. If I wanted to get my mail from my mailbox, I wouldn't say I'm "seeking it" or "searching for it", I would be just "getting" it from the place that I know it will be.

In any case, your answer doesn't really address OPs question. OP didn't ask if "search" and "seek" are interchangeable, or if there are cases where they're not interchangeable, or for examples of either or actually anything at all about the individual words "seek" and "search". The OP asked, if there are differences between an animal "seeking food" or "searching for food" are they synonymous , and why one is preferred over the other.

Show 16 more comments. Perhaps someone with a background in older English usage can shed some light on this In looking through the King James Bible, I found that search seems to be used more for land or physical things search Israel or search your heart , and seek for specific things, such as Jesus, answers, or abstracts "seek and ye shall find.

You might want to do a google search for the word "seek" before saying that native speakers don't use it much. If the answers were A. Examine the first definitions of search and seek : search: to carefully look for someone or something seek: to search for someone or something Compare these to this entry under look : — look for 1 : to await with hope or anticipation 2 : to search for : seek They are each used to define the other.

I see The word was used several times in the last few weeks. Might read what I said again - specifically re: written communications. Other than someone uttering the old saw "seek and ye shall find" - when was the last time you heard "seek" in verbal communication? I could be wrong, but at this moment, I'll stand by my thoughts on the use of seek.

BTW - someone else got a Google Ngram comparing seek and search for. At the very least it is rare, particularly in spoken English. Go look up seek on Google for USA today, the newspaper.

If it were possible to check spoken news programs, you'd see that it is indeed still used. Hagen von Eitzen Hagen von Eitzen 4 4 bronze badges. You find when you seek. You tend to seek about a thing when you are curious about it. If you think someone is lying, you seek out the veracity of his statement.

He was seeking familiar places when he revisited his old school. You are not searching or trying to find comfort, you seek comfort. Similarly you seek truth and do not search or find it. Your email address will not be published.