Meaning of investigate in English

investigate

verb [ T ]

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/ɪnˈves.tɪ.ɡeɪt/ us

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/ɪnˈves.tə.ɡeɪt/

to examine a crime, problem, statement, etc. carefully, especially to discover the truth:

Police are investigating allegations of corruption involving senior executives.

[ + question word ] We are of course investigating how an error like this could have occurred.

More examples

Scotland Yard have been called in to investigate the murder.
The remit of this official inquiry is to investigate the reasons for the accident.
The government set up a commission to investigate the problem of inner city violence.
The UN is investigating new methods of population control .
I wonder what that noise was in the kitchen - I'd better go and investigate.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Analysing and evaluating

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(Definition of investigate from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

investigate | American Dictionary

investigate

verb [ I/T ]

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/ɪnˈves·tɪˌɡeɪt/

to examine something carefully, esp. to discover the truth about it:

[ I ] There was a suspicious man near the playground, and we asked the police to investigate.

[ T ] The school created an independent review board to investigate charges of misconduct.

investigator

noun [ C ] us

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/ɪnˈves·tɪˌɡeɪ·t̬ər/

She hired a private investigator to check into her husband’s activities.

(Definition of investigate from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

investigate | Business English

investigate

verb

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/ɪnˈvestɪɡeɪt/ us

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[ I or T ]

to examine a crime, problem, statement, etc. carefully, especially to discover the truth:

The FBI was called in to investigate.

Detectives will continue to investigate the incident.

investigate allegations/claims/complaints of sth The office is investigating the allegations of embezzlement.

investigate how/whether/why The commission will investigate whether these companies violated anti-trust laws.

[ T ]

to try to discover the truth about someone who is accused of a crime:

investigate sb for sth The IRS are investigating Williams for alleged tax fraud.

investigator

noun [ C ]

Investigators discovered that the bank had covered up massive bad loans.

(Definition of investigate from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of investigate

investigate

The third approach uses planning effects on task performance to investigate how learners monitor their language.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Various aspects of the interaction of relativistically intense pulses with preformed plasmas and solid targets were investigated in the experiments.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

More examples Fewer examples

A second common feature of qualitative research is the emphasis upon the description of the setting being investigated.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This is being investigated for traits in rice such as grain width and protein contents where significant genotype by environment interaction has been detected.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In particular, problems of coexistence and exclusion of competing species have been theoretically investigated using models based on partial and ordinary differential equations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The impact of singing on children's psychological state and well-being was investigated with a participant population of 76 pre-pubertal children.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The studies that investigated the effects of fruits and vegetables have demonstrated some protective effects.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To investigate these hypotheses, we defined a number of regions that have been identified as part of the social brain network in adults.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Here we investigate an idealised problem where the rigid bottom is replaced by a layer with a damping mechanism.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This also illustrates that segmental reductions should be investigated in context, not as an isolated phenomenon.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We review research investigating the roles played by these variables in studies of choice from our laboratory.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We generalize the notion of reversible systems in symbolic dynamics, and investigate their properties.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Finally, we investigated the genetic relationship between affective and somatic depressive symptoms.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The aim of this study was to investigate outcome in frequent attenders in secondary care who present repeatedly with medically unexplained symptoms.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Translations of investigate

in Chinese (Traditional)

（尤指為揭開真相）調查，審查…

Meaning of investigate in English

investigate | American Dictionary

investigator

investigate | Business English

investigator

Examples of investigate

Translations of investigate

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