detect
Usage
What are other ways to say detect?
To detect implies becoming aware of something that had been obscure, secret, or concealed: to detect a flaw in reasoning. To ascertain is to verify facts by inquiry or analysis: to ascertain the truth about an event. To learn is to add to one's knowledge or information: to learn a language. The verb discover is used with objective clauses as a synonym of learn in order to suggest that the new information acquired is surprising to the learner: I discovered that she had been married before.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But fraudsters are growing more sophisticated and harder to detect.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026
The findings suggest that future surveys, which will examine large numbers of exoplanets, could use statistical techniques to detect life across entire populations of planets.
From Science Daily • Apr. 15, 2026
How to detect AI-composed text—and whether humans or software can tell the difference—is a subject of academic debate.
From Barron's • Apr. 14, 2026
The study’s findings also highlight gaps in disease surveillance systems, which often fail to detect pathogens circulating in wildlife before they reach humans.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 13, 2026
But the result was that as far as he could detect, in the A group the aging process seemed to stop almost completely.
From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien
Vocabulary lists containing detect
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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List 9
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