Dictionary

oversearch en · VERB

Etymology

From over- + search.

Meanings

1. (archaic, transitive) To search all over.
   • To oversearch the fearful ocean 1861, Robert Greene, George Peele, Alexander Dyce, The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Robert Greene & George Peele, page 89:
2. To search excessively.
   • Oversearching: If you look long enough and hard enough for any particular pattern in a data set, the more you look, the more likely you are to find it—whether it's meaningful or not. 2003, Dorian Pyle, Business Modeling and Data Mining, page 363:
   • But people undersearch far more than they oversearch: We tend to explore situations less thoroughly than our own goals recommend! 1995, David Perkins, Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence:

Forms