Word.ws English Dictionary

cast about

cast about verb: to try to find; look around; search.

Verb

cast about (third-person singular simple present casts about, present participle casting about, simple past and past participle cast about)

  1. (intransitive) To try to find; look around; search.
    • The hounds cast about for the fox's trail.
  2. (transitive) To plan; plot; contrive.

Forms of cast about

third-person singular presentcasts about
present participlecasting about
past participlecast about
pastcast about

Origin of cast about

From cast (“to try”) + about, perhaps dissimulated from becast (“to cast about, plot”). Compare also Old English costian (“to try, examine”). More at cast, costen.

Questions about cast about

What does cast about mean?
Cast about means to try to find; look around; search.
What part of speech is cast about?
Cast about is a verb.
What is the past tense of cast about?
The past tense of cast about is cast about.

Words near cast about in the dictionary

  1. cassythine
  2. cast
  3. cast a chill
  4. cast a pall
  5. cast a shadow
  6. cast about
  7. cast accounts
  8. cast adrift
  9. cast anchor
  10. cast around
  11. cast aside

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cast about (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cast about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cast_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.