interrogate

What it means

1. transitiveTo question or quiz, especially in a thorough or aggressive manner.

   The police interrogated the suspect at some length before they let him go.

2. transitivecomputingTo query (something); to request information from (something).

   to interrogate a database

3. literarytransitiveTo examine (something) critically.

   Griffin's approach allows her to reveal Billie Holiday's resilient strength of character and to interrogate the racism she endured, which was as tragic as her personal mistakes.

   2015, Rita Kiki Edozie, Curtis Stokes, Malcolm X's Michigan Worldview: An Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies, Michigan State University Press

   1 more example

   Within the contemporary US context, the construct of childhood innocence is a powerful social myth that structures children’s social relations and culture and informs their rights and status in society. In this article, I interrogate the construct of childhood innocence to examine how it operates as an exclusionary form of social practice.

   2019 February 1, J. C. Garden, “Interrogating innocence: “Childhood” as exclusionary social practice”, in Childhood, volume 26, number 1, page 54

In a sentence

The police interrogated the suspect at some length before they let him go.

Where it comes from

1. Latininterrogō“to inquire, interrogate”
2. Latininterrogātus
3. Englishinterrogate

Learned borrowing from Latin interrogātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin interrogō (“to inquire, interrogate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).