SEARCH ENGINE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does search engine mean? 

• SEARCH ENGINE (noun)
  The noun SEARCH ENGINE has 1 sense:

1. a computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet)

  Familiarity information: SEARCH ENGINE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SEARCH ENGINE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("search engine" is a kind of...):

computer program; computer programme; program; programme ((computer science) a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute)

Instance hyponyms:

Google (a widely used search engine that uses text-matching techniques to find web pages that are important and relevant to a user's search)

Yahoo (a widely used search engine for the web that finds information, news, images, products, finance)

Ask Jeeves (a widely used search engine accepting plain English questions or phrases or terms)

 Context examples 

A positive return on a search in a database or by way of a search engine on the Internet; the request for and delivery of a file (such as a Web page) on a server.

(Hit, NCI Thesaurus)