quest

[kwest] /kwɛst/
noun
1.
a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something:
a quest for uranium mines; a quest for knowledge.
2.
Medieval Romance. an adventurous expedition undertaken by a knight or knights to secure or achieve something:
the quest of the Holy Grail.
3.
those engaged in such an expedition.
4.
British Dialect, inquest.
5.
Obsolete. a jury of inquest.
verb (used without object)
6.
to search; seek (often followed by for or after):
to quest after hidden treasure.
7.
to go on a quest.
8.
Hunting.
  1. to search for game.
  2. to bay or give tongue in pursuit of game.
verb (used with object)
9.
to search or seek for; pursue.
Origin
1275-1325; (noun) Middle English queste < Old French < Latin quaesīta, feminine past participle of quaerere to seek; (v.) Middle English questen < Old French quester, derivative of the noun
Related forms
quester, noun
questingly, adverb
unquested, adjective
Synonyms
1. hunt, seeking, journey, mission, enterprise.
Examples from the web for quest
  • Everything went badly, leaving this humorous account the only bright spot in their quest.
  • But as the industry extends its reach, the quest is becoming more arduous.
  • The quest for knowledge used to begin with grand theories.
  • They found that students' level of spiritual quest, or seeking meaning and purpose in life, rose during college.
  • But, as with the quest for oil, growing organically is expensive at the moment.
  • The movie gets going once the quest begins and the adventurers hit the road.
  • So began my quest to discover craftspeople passing on a special kind of knowledge to the next generation.
  • His quest is our quest: the ceaseless striving to live out our true creed.
  • They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought.
  • Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up.
British Dictionary definitions for quest

quest

/kwɛst/
noun
1.
the act or an instance of looking for or seeking; search: a quest for diamonds
2.
(in medieval romance) an expedition by a knight or company of knights to accomplish some prescribed task, such as finding the Holy Grail
3.
the object of a search; goal or target: my quest is the treasure of the king
4.
(rare) a collection of alms
verb (mainly intransitive)
5.
foll by for or after. to go in search (of)
6.
to go on a quest
7.
(of gun dogs or hounds)
  1. to search for game
  2. to bay when in pursuit of game
8.
(rare) to collect alms
9.
(also transitive) (archaic) to go in search of (a thing); seek or pursue
Derived Forms
quester, noun
questing, adjective
questingly, adverb
Word Origin
C14: from Old French queste, from Latin quaesita sought, from quaerere to seek
Word Origin and History for quest
n.

c.1300, "an inquest;" early 14c., "a search for something" (especially of judicial inquiries or hounds seeking game), from Old French queste "search, quest, chase, hunt, pursuit; inquest, inquiry" (12c., Modern French quête), properly "the act of seeking," and directly from Medieval Latin questa "search, inquiry," alteration of Latin quaesitus (fem. quaesita) "sought-out, select," past participle of quaerere "seek, gain, ask" (see query (n.)). Romance sense of "adventure undertaken by a knight" (especially the search for the Grail) is attested from late 14c. Johnson's dictionary has questmonger "Starter of lawsuits or prosecutions."

v.

mid-14c., "to seek game, hunt," from quest (n.) and from Old French quester "to search, hunt," from queste (n.). Related: Quested; questing.

quest in Technology

1. A language designed for its simple denotational semantics. "The Denotational Semantics of Programming Languages", R. Tennent, CACM 19(8):437-453 (Aug 1976).
2. QUantifiers and SubTypes. Language with a sophisticated type system. Just as types classify values, "kinds" classify types and type operators. Explicit universal and existential quantification over types, type operators, and subtypes. Subtyping is defined inductively on all type constructions, including higher-order functions and abstract types. User-definable higher-order type operators.
"Typeful Programming", Luca Cardelli , RR 45, DEC SRC 1989.
Implemented in Modula-3.
(ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/Quest/quest12A.tar.Z).
3. A multimedia authoring system. Quest has been available for MS-DOS for some time. Version 3.5 for Microsoft Windows was released around March 1995. It features an Authorware-style flowchart system with an ANSI-C script language.
(1995-04-02)
Idioms and Phrases with quest

quest

see under in search of