The noun search has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (14) search, hunt, hunting -- (the activity of looking thoroughly in order to find something or someone)
2. (6) search -- (an investigation seeking answers; "a thorough search of the ledgers revealed nothing"; "the outcome justified the search")
3. search, lookup -- (an operation that determines whether one or more of a set of items has a specified property; "they wrote a program to do a table lookup")
4. search -- (the examination of alternative hypotheses; "his search for a move that would avoid checkmate was unsuccessful")
5. search -- (boarding and inspecting a ship on the high seas; "right of search")
Overview of verb search
The verb search has 4 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (13) search, seek, look for -- (try to locate or discover, or try to establish the existence of; "The police are searching for clues"; "They are searching for the missing man in the entire county")
2. (12) search, look -- (search or seek; "We looked all day and finally found the child in the forest"; "Look elsewhere for the perfect gift!")
3. (3) research, search, explore -- (inquire into; "the students had to research the history of the Second World War for their history project"; "He searched for information on his relatives on the web"; "Scientists are exploring the nature of consciousness")
4. (2) search -- (subject to a search; "The police searched the suspect"; "We searched the whole house for the missing keys")