browse

present singular third person browses · participle present browsing · participle past browsed · past browsed

1. To scan, to casually look through in order to find items of interest, especially without knowledge of what to look for beforehand.

   I'm just browsing around.

   3 more examples

   I stopped in several bookstores to browse.

   At Hampton Court the little flocks of visitors are not provided with an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion upon the local antiquities.

   1878, Henry James, An International Episode

   The little room in which he found himself was plainly the bookseller's sanctum, and contained his own private library. Gilbert browsed along the shelves curiously. The volumes were mostly shabby and bruised; they had evidently been picked up one by one in the humble mangers of the second-hand vendor.

   1919, Christopher Morley, “(please specify the page)”, in The Haunted Bookshop, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC

2. To move about while sampling, such as with food or products on display.
3. transitivecomputingTo navigate through hyperlinked documents on a computer, usually with a browser.

   HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.

   1990 November 12, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, “WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project”, in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

4. intransitiveTo move about while eating parts of plants, especially plants other than pasture, such as shrubs or trees.

   Sheep ranged everywhere under the low cedars. They browsed with noses in the frost, and from all around came the tinkle of tiny bells on the curly-horned rams, and an endless variety of bleats.

   1910, Zane Grey, The Heritage of the Desert

   1 more example

   Also, when planting to provide a source of browse for wintering deer and elk, protect seedlings from browsing during the first several years; an electric fence enclosure can offer effective protection.

   1997, Kent Grant, “Wildlife Values of Conservation”, in Colorado State Forest Service, archived from the original on 11 Jun 2010

5. archaicTo feed on, as pasture; to pasture on; to graze.

   The fields between / Are dewy-fresh, brows'd by deep-udder'd kine, […]

   1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Gardener’s Daughter; or, The Pictures”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 21

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   “If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?”

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC

plural browses

1. uncountableYoung shoots and twigs.

   Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, / On browz, and corn, and flowery meadows feed.

   1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   And with their horned feet the greene gras wore, / The whiles their Gotes upon the brouzes fedd […]

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

2. uncountableFodder for cattle and other animals.

   In the Panhandle Area, bison eat browse that includes mesquite and elm.

   2007, Texas Parks and Wildlife Service

   2 more examples

   The Grand Canyon seems to us Mormons to mark the line. There's enough browse here to feed a hundred thousand cattle. But water's the thing.

   1910, Zane Grey, The Heritage of the Desert

   Also, when planting to provide a source of browse for wintering deer and elk, protect seedlings from browsing during the first several years; an electric fence enclosure can offer effective protection.

   1997, Colorado State Forest Service

3. countableThe act of browsing through something.

   I had a browse in the old bookshop.

4. countableThat which one browses through; something to read.

   Here he buried himself in a close-printed, thickish volume which had been his chosen browse for some time.

   1899, Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.

5. CornwalluncountablefishingBruised fish used as bait.

   He cast in his hook-and-line, intending to take one fish only for his supper, from the multitude that always came around the rock on which he stood as soon as he cast in "browse" (garbage to attract fish).

   1873, William Bottrell, Traditions and hearthside stories of west Cornwall, page 145