query
/ˈkwɪɹ.i/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.64 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
noun
A set of instructions passed to a database.
noun
Ellipsis of query letter.
verb
To pass a set of instructions to a database to retrieve information from it.
Example Sentences
- "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 their errand and their own relations."
- "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. bunched, bumped, knocked, smote."
- "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."
- "The database admin switched on query logging for debugging purposes."
Etymology
An anglicisation of quere, an obsolete variant form of Latin quaere, second-person singular present active imperative of quaerō (“seek, look for; ask”); perhaps suffixed with -y (“abstract noun”). Cognate with French quérir, Italian chiedere, Portuguese querer, Romanian cere, and Spanish querer. Compare question.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkwɪɹ.i/
- British English: /ˈkwɪə.ɹi/