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.
See Examples For:
Earth's atmosphere naturally glows in these wavelengths, making it much harder for ground based telescopes to detect such faint objects.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
Eventually, they used stray dogs, hoping they could detect the scent of flesh.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
And now, existing X-ray machines would be modified to detect explosives.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2026
The monitoring devices which were believed to have been dropped by the Bear-F plane float on the water and use sonar to detect submarines and other vessels.
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2026
“Their blood is blue, and it can detect really small amounts of bacteria, so scientists use it to test vaccines.”
From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Despite the signs of AI fatigue, Wood detects no signs of flagging commitment from the hyperscalers.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
If the robot detects a problem, such as a knee joint that stops responding, it will try to recover its balance; if it can’t, he said, it will collapse onto itself like an imploding building.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 4, 2026
Male and female U1s can speak through an artificial intelligence tool programmed by the company to offer soothing words if it detects fatigue or stress, and get to know its user over time.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
In fact, studies suggest that around 10% receive a shock from their device after it detects an abnormal heart rhythm.
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
As the brain detects a fall in blood temperature, it automatically protects itself by shutting down the blood supply to the hands and feet.
From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman
This story was generated in part by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
Using a technique called riverfly monitoring, the sampling looks at levels of invertebrate life in the water, which means any pollution or deterioration in water quality can be quickly detected.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Some irregular food items such as chicken and pig were also detected in the samples, suggesting that wolves are also scavenging from human waste disposal sites.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
Until now, astronomers had mostly detected only the brightest and rarest ancient quasars, leaving too few examples to study the early quasar population as a whole.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
Hedge had already detected that she wasn’t human.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
The annual physical is obviously important for detecting disease but less so for preventing it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
Thursday, South Coast Air Quality Management District monitors and low-cost sensors near the warehouse weren’t detecting elevated levels of particulate pollution from the fire, regulators said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
TES spectrometers were originally created for astrophysics applications, where detecting extremely weak photon signals is essential.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 24, 2026
"It offers advantages over conventional experimental techniques by detecting subtle directional magnetic patterns across different regions of a material without significantly disturbing it."
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
He spent all of five minutes bombarding uranium oxide, and, detecting no neutrons in his apparatus, gave up.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Vocabulary lists containing detect
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