Word.ws English Dictionary

sniffing out

sniffing out is the present participle and gerund of sniff out.

Meaning of sniff out

Verb

sniff out (third-person singular simple present sniffs out, present participle sniffing out, simple past and past participle sniffed out)

  1. (transitive) To find (something) by using the sense of smell.
    • Because they have far more powerful noses than humans, dogs are ideal to sniff out drugs.
  2. (broadly, figuratively, transitive) To detect (something hidden or invisible).
    • Near-synonyms: ferret out, weasel out

Questions about sniffing out

What is sniffing out the present participle and gerund of?
Sniffing out is the present participle and gerund of sniff out.

Words near sniffing out in the dictionary

  1. sniffin'
  2. sniffiness
  3. sniffinesses
  4. sniffing
  5. sniffing around
  6. sniffing out
  7. sniffing position
  8. sniffing positions
  9. sniffing up
  10. sniffing-the-morning-air position
  11. sniffing-the-morning-air positions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sniffing out (page history and authors); sniff out (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: “sniffing out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sniffing_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.