/ˈkwɪə.ɹi/, /ˈkwɪ.ɹi/, /ˈkwɛ.ɹi/
OriginAn anglicisation of quere, an obsolete variant form of Latin quaere, second-person singular present active imperative of quaerō (“seek, look for; ask”). Cognate with French quérir, Italian chiedere, Portuguese querer, Romanian cere, and Spanish querer. Compare question.
- A question, an inquiry (US), an enquiry (UK).
“The teacher answered the student’s query concerning biosynthesis.”
“Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of ”
- A question mark.
“His Glossary has ‘bouchen, to stop people's mouths,’; but this is followed by a query, to show that it was but a guess. I have shown, from the MSS. and other sources, that it should be bonched, i.e. b”
“She had written in her diary: "I don't think I am in a concentration-camp??????", the queries growing larger and more numerous till they covered the entire page […]”
“I refer you to your line above, where you use a query and a bang together.”
- A set of instructions passed to a database.
“The database admin switched on query logging for debugging purposes.”
- abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsisEllipsis of query letter.
“Although many agents accept email queries, check to see if they prefer mailed query letters.”
- intransitiveTo ask a question.
- transitiveTo ask, inquire.
“It’s queried whether there be any Science in the ſenſe of the Dogmatiſts: […]”
““You must have had an active life,” queried the shopkeeper, “before you retired?””
“I tried that once in an AOL thing called "The Arena", I can't remember who the celebrity was, but I posed some divinely thoughtful, inspired, well-crafted question, and they chose one, instead, that q”
- transitiveTo question or call into doubt.
“The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. No one queried it. It was in the classic pattern of human weakness, mean and em”
- To pass a set of instructions to a database to retrieve information from it.
“Linked tables can be accessed, queried, combined and reorganised much more flexibly and in a number of ways that may not be immediately predictable when the database is under construction.”
- Internet, transitiveTo send a private message to (a user on IRC).
“He parted the channel saying "SHUTUP!"... so I queried him, asking if there was something I could do.. maybe talk...”
“if you know someone who is in the channel, you can query them and ask for the key.”
- intransitiveTo send out a query letter.
Formsqueries(plural) · quæry(alternative, archaic) · queries(present, singular, third-person) · querying(participle, present) · queried(participle, past) · queried(past) · Querys(plural)