browse
/braʊz
/verb [no object]
1Survey goods for sale in a leisurely and casual way: he stopped to browse around a second-hand bookshop...
- The comfortable spaciousness of the centre makes shoppers to browse in the most leisurely fashion away from the harsh elements outside.
- He had casually turned to another sales stand and was browsing through the male jewelry laid out neatly before him.
- You're welcome to browse around while I'm working - check out the kitchen cabinets, dig through my collections, or head on down to the basement and see what you can find..
Synonyms
look around/round, have a look, window-shop, peruse
1.1Scan through a text, website, or collection of data to gain an impression of the contents: she browsed through the newspaper [with object]: I decided to spend the night browsing the Internet...
- Beneath the lush canopy of a huge tree near the University Office at Palayam, people are lazily browsing through books and magazines.
- Start by browsing through magazines, home design catalogs and books, and visiting model homes.
- Laurie explains that it was while they were browsing through magazines and looking for a suitable property that she cottoned on to the fact that property was - and still is - so much cheaper in France.
Synonyms
scan, skim, glance, look, run one's eye over, have a look at, peruse, give something a/the once-over;
thumb, leaf, flip, flick, run, dip into;
riffle, speed-read
2(Of an animal) feed on leaves, twigs, or other high-growing vegetation: they reach upward to browse on bushes...
- In addition to consuming leaf litter and propagules, grapsoid crabs also browse directly on mangrove vegetation.
- African rhinos tend to feed low to the ground whereas Asian rhinos usually browse on leaves.
- As the days cooled and shortened, Jock and Fly climbed the great hill through the lowering mists into the sunlight where harrier hawks and eaglets soared and Cheviot sheep browsed in this brilliant air.
Synonyms
graze, feed, eat, nibble, crop, pasture, ruminate
noun
1 [in singular] An act of casual looking or reading: a browse through the sports pages I was just having a quick browse around the antique stalls the brochure is well worth a browse...
- A casual browse through company archive reinforces the premium placed on craftsmanship throughout Mackintosh's 102-year history.
- As usual The Beatles have a massive presence with some very interesting articles, well worth a browse through all the items just for some of the stories.
- Even a casual browse of the pamphlet gets one's linguistic antennae tingling.
1.1A book, magazine, or website to be casually looked through: this book is a useful browse for a new worker in the field...
- Not a book to buy, but not a bad browse on a short break, especially if frequent mentions of Anna Karenina and Middlemarch cheer you (nope, not here).
- It is still a good browse for a Sanskrit-philiac.
- Charles: your site was a good browse, thank you.
Synonyms
scan, read, skim, leaf, flick through, glance, look
2 [mass noun] Vegetation, such as twigs and young shoots, eaten by animals: a moose needs to eat forty to fifty pounds of browse a day...
- They are entirely herbivorous, feeding largely on grass and some browse.
- Wild herbs blanket the ground, providing plentiful browse for deer.
- Their diet includes both browse and graze, and they also consume some mosses and lichens.
Derivatives
browsable
- It's ideal if you are selling something browsable.
- He writes: ‘The site is a freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago.’
- Even so, publishers are mostly in favour, since the browsable titles in Amazon's stock have immediately leapt in sales by nearly 10%.
Origin
Late Middle English (in sense 2 of the verb): from Old French broster, from brost 'young shoot', probably of Germanic origin.