quest
/kwɛst
/noun
1A long or arduous search for something: the quest for a reliable vaccine has intensified...
- It is understood that the quest for funding will start in both Mayo and Roscommon County Councils.
- Kant saw this as Hume's challenge to philosophy, understood as the quest for a priori knowledge of fundamental truths.
- Faith thus combined with reason in the quest for understanding, and indeed extended the possibilities of understanding.
Synonyms
search, hunt, pursuit;
pursuance of, investigation into
1.1(In medieval romance) an expedition made by a knight to accomplish a prescribed task.Just as in his academic work he had explored the meaning of Medieval quests and puzzles, he applied these themes to his fiction....
- So my idea is that we need these shining knights from the castle to journey forth on a quest.
- Three medieval knights set off on their horses on their individual quests to put right all things that have gone wrong.
Synonyms
expedition, adventure, journey, voyage, trek, travels, odyssey, wandering, journeying, exploration, venture, search, undertaking;
crusade, mission, pilgrimage, errand
rare peregrination
verb [no object]
1Search for something: he was a real scientist, questing after truth...
- Whatever allegorical path of interpretation one pursues, it is the fine filigree fiction of Shaul's anguish that grips, as he quests for the unknowable.
- Rock journalists have long been questing after the next visionary songwriter capable of treading in Dylan's gaping, mythical footprints, but so far those who draw comparison only crumble under the weight of his legend.
- Down you go, and down, and further down, spiralling into the seismically unstable bowels of the Los Angeles earth in circles of looming darkness, questing for a parking space of your own, further and further down.
1.1 [with object] literary Search for; seek out: they quest wisdom...
- Only when beliefs conflict with personal experiences will most people start questing the truth of their beliefs.
Synonyms
search, seek, look, hunt, pursue, investigate, explore, probe, inspect
Derivatives
quester
- In the second allegory, he figures the artist as pilgrim, jongleur or monk; as an ageing questor meditating on his paint-brush, or as a scholar discoursing on the enigmas of reality.
- One of the most appealing things about the questers in The Wizard of Oz is that they already possessed what they sought - they simply needed the quest to reveal their hitherto hidden qualities.
- My temperament is equal parts nester and quester, but I need the former in order to sustain the latter.
questingly
- But gradually England's hopes of winning were fading; only Cowdrey went questingly on, unable to believe that the weather could thwart him again.
- Luxton can turn inward questingly when his own condition threatens to pin him as a butterfly is pinned..., and he embraces a natural world that will always hold sway among poets.
- He is fascinated by the world of ideas, idiosyncratic, questingly intellectual and a person who finds the channels of painting, music and words the most suited to expressing his rich interior world and his creative potential.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French queste (noun), quester (verb), based on Latin quaerere 'ask, seek'. See also inquest.