noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act of investigating; the process of inquiring into or following up; research, especially patient or thorough inquiry or examination countable, uncountable

   "The investigation into the crime has led to various leads as well as plenty of dead ends."

2. 2
   the work of inquiring into something thoroughly and systematically wordnet
3. 3
   an inquiry into unfamiliar or questionable activities wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

probeairingamassing evidenceanalysisauditbuzz session

Example

More examples

"The students assisted the professor in the investigation."

Etymology

From Middle English investigacioun, from Old French investigacion, from Latin investigatio. Morphologically investigate + -ion.

Related phrases

background investigationfield investigationjoint investigation teampatient under investigationre-investigationdetective workfollow uplook intolooking intopolice evaluationpolice work

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.