hunt
/hʌnt/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northern England/hʊnt/
hunt verb: to find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.
Verb
hunt (third-person singular simple present hunts, present participle hunting, simple past and past participle hunted)
- To find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.
- State Wildlife Management areas often offer licensed hunters the opportunity to hunt on public lands.
- Her uncle will go out and hunt for deer, now that it is open season.
- To try to find something; search (for).
- The little girl was hunting for shells on the beach.
- The police are hunting for evidence.
- To drive; to chase; with down, from, away, etc.
- to hunt down a criminal
- He was hunted from the parish.
- To use or manage (dogs, horses, etc.) in hunting.
- Did you hunt that pony last week?
- He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country.1711 July 14 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “TUESDAY, July 4, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 104; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New...
- To use or traverse in pursuit of game.
- He hunts the woods, or the country.
- To move or shift the order of (a bell) in a regular course of changes.
- To shift up and down in order regularly.
- To be in a state of instability of movement or forced oscillation, as a governor which has a large movement of the balls for small change of load, an arc-lamp clutch mechanism which moves rapidly up and down with variations of current, etc.; also, to seesaw, as a pair of alternators working in parallel.
- […] after which the inertia of the camera causes the motor to hunt with fluctuating speed.1995, Bernard Wilkie, Special Effects in Television, page 174
Noun
hunt (plural hunts)
- The act of hunting.
- Through male bonding, the subculture of the hunt caught up in the mystique of the chase, the hunting party became a military force, and men discovered that they need not stop at defense: they could go out to hunt for other people's wealth.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 134
- A hunting expedition.
- An organization devoted to hunting, or the people belonging to it.
- A pack of hunting dogs.
- the rim at the base has a hunt of dogs and stags on a running scroll1878, Ancient and Modern Gold and Silver Smiths' Work in the South Kensington Museum, Chapman and Hall, page 271
- I've heard that back in the days of fox hunting, kennels would keep a “hunt” of foxhounds up in the 50 - 100 dog range.2026 April 14, solsticesunrise, “Southwind Plantation”, in reddit, archived from the original on 25 Jul 2026
Proper noun capitalized: Hunt
Hunt (countable and uncountable, plural Hunts)
- An English surname originating as an occupation for a hunter (for game, birds etc).
- A male given name transferred from the surname.
- An unincorporated community in Knox County, Ohio, United States.
- An unincorporated community in Kerr County, Texas, United States.
- Former name of McFarland, California.
- Ellipsis of Hunt County.
hunt meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
hunt in Hindi
- to chase down prey
- शिकार करना śikār karnā
- the act of hunting, shooting
- शिकार śikār, आखेट ākheṭ
hunt in Tamil
- the act of hunting, shooting
- வேட்டை vēṭṭai
hunt in Marathi
- to chase down prey
- शिकार करणे śikār karṇe
- the act of hunting, shooting
- शिकार śikār
- hunting expedition
- शिकार śikār
hunt in Urdu
- to chase down prey
- شکار کرنا śikār karnā, صید کرنا said karnā
- the act of hunting, shooting
- شِکار śikār, صَید said
More languagesFewer languages
- hunt in Bengali
- শিকার śikar
- hunt in Telugu
- వేటాడు vēṭāḍu, వేట vēṭa
- hunt in Malayalam
- വേട്ടയാടുക vēṭṭayāṭuka, നായാടുക nāyāṭuka, നായാട്ട് nāyāṭṭŭ, വേട്ട vēṭṭa
- hunt in Kannada
- ಬೇಟೆ bēṭe
- hunt in Punjabi
- ਸ਼ਿਕਾਰ śikār, شِکار śikār
- hunt in Gujarati
- શિકાર કરવા
- hunt in Odia
- ଶିକାର śikāra
- hunt in Assamese
- চিকাৰ কৰা sikar kora
- hunt in Nepali
- सिकार गर्नु sikār garnu
- hunt in Pashto
- صيد sayd, ښکار x̌kār
- hunt in Tagalog
- pangangaso
- hunt in Arabic
- اِصْطَادَ iṣṭāda, صَادَ ṣāda, صَيْد ṣayd, مُطارَدَة muṭārada
- hunt in Malay
- berburu, memburu, pemburuan
- hunt in Indonesian
- buru, perburuan, pemburuan
- hunt in Persian
- شکار کردن šekâr kardan, صید کردن seyd kardan
- hunt in Thai
- ล่าสัตว์ lâa sàt, ล่า lâa, การล่า gaan-lâa
- hunt in Vietnamese
- săn bắn, sự săn bắn
- hunt in Myanmar
- အမဲလိုက် a.mai:luik
Examples of hunt in a sentence
- Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, / Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.1835, Alfred Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 100:
- Either the bird will be downgraded to "threatened" status — which means it can be hunted — or it will be declared a nonspecies, as has already happened to all its taxonomic kissing cousins.1981, Field & Stream, volume 86, number 5, page 107:
- Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- My idea of retirement was to hunt seashells, play golf, and do a lot of walking.2004, Prill Boyle, Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women, →ISBN, page 119:
Forms of hunt
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | hunts |
| present participle | hunting |
| past participle | hunted |
| past | hunted |
| Noun | |
| plural | hunts |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Hunts |
Origin of hunt
From Middle English hunten, from Old English huntian (“to hunt”), from Proto-West Germanic *huntōn (“to hunt, capture”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱent- (“to catch, seize”). Related to Old High German hunda (“booty”), Gothic 𐌷𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 (hunþs, “body of captives”), Old English hūþ (“plunder, booty, prey”), Old English hentan (“to catch, seize”). More at hent, hint. In some areas read as a collective form of hound by folk etymology.
Words formed from hunt
- antihunt
- bunny hunt
- canned hunt
- dog in the hunt
- drag hunt
- Easter egg hunt
- egg hunt
- foxhunt
- fox hunt
- ghosthunt
- hunt ball
- huntboard
- huntless
- huntlike
- huntmaster
- hunt saboteur
- Hunt's Cross
- hunt seat
- huntsperson
- Hunts Point
- huntswoman
- Internet hunt
- in the hunt
- manhunt
- molehunt
- on the hunt
- personhunt
- pixel hunt
- puzzlehunt
- scavenger hunt
- snark hunt
- snipe hunt
- superhunt
- thrill of the hunt
- trail hunt
- treasure hunt
- Wild Hunt
- witch hunt
- witch-hunt
- womanhunt
- Hunt County
- Hunts Grove
- Huntsville
- book-hunt
- bookhunter
- bowhunt
- headhunt
- head-hunt
- house-hunt
- huntable
- hunt-and-peck
- hunt and peck
- hunt down
- hunted
- huntee
- hunter
- hunteress
- hunting
- hunt out
- Huntress
Phrases with hunt
Words that rhyme with hunt
Questions about hunt
- What does hunt mean?
- Hunt means to find or search for an animal in the wild with the intention of killing the animal for its meat or for sport.
- What is hunt in Hindi?
- Hunt in Hindi is शिकार करना (śikār karnā), शिकार (śikār), आखेट (ākheṭ). See Hunt meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use hunt in a sentence?
- Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, / Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
- What part of speech is hunt?
- Hunt can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce hunt?
- Hunt is pronounced /hʌnt/.
- What is the past tense of hunt?
- The past tense of hunt is hunted.
Words near hunt in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hunt (page history and authors); Hunt (page history and authors); hunt (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hunt.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hunt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hunt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.