Word.ws English Dictionary

stop-and-search

stop-and-search adjective: of or pertaining to laws or policing practices, found in some jurisdictions, which permit a law enforcement officer to temporarily detain and search a member of the public based on the officer's suspicions.

Adjective

stop-and-search

  1. Of or pertaining to laws or policing practices, found in some jurisdictions, which permit a law enforcement officer to temporarily detain and search a member of the public based on the officer's suspicions.
    • Adding to the department's problems is a long-running controversy over a stop-and-search policy that includes random searches of young black men.1990 January 18, Constance L. Hays, “3 Cases Raise Questions on Boston Police Methods”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 Aug 2013
    • The high court renewed its decision to throw out evidence in a 1992 Montgomery County traffic stop-and-search case that uncovered a small amount of marijuana and a methamphetamine pill.1997 November 13, Rob Modic, “Motorist Must Know "Free to Go"”, in Dayton Daily News, USA, retrieved 20 Aug 2013

Noun

stop-and-search (plural stops-and-searches or stop-and-searches)

  1. A police action of this type.
    • Read literally, he simply ruled that a cop made a bad collar, a stop-and-search without "reasonable suspicion."1996 April 5, "The Baer Truth: It Was A Shameless Judicial Cave-in, New York Daily News (retrieved 20 August 2013)

Forms of stop-and-search

Adjective
alternative formstop-and-frisk
alternative formstop and search
Noun
pluralstops-and-searches
pluralstop-and-searches

Questions about stop-and-search

What does stop-and-search mean?
Stop-and-search means of or pertaining to laws or policing practices, found in some jurisdictions, which permit a law enforcement officer to temporarily detain and search a member of the public based on the officer's suspicions.
What part of speech is stop-and-search?
Stop-and-search can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near stop-and-search in the dictionary

  1. stop-and-go light
  2. stop-and-go lights
  3. stop-and-go penalties
  4. stop-and-go penalty
  5. stop-and-gos
  6. stop-and-search
  7. stop-and-searches
  8. stop-gap
  9. stop-gapped
  10. stop-gapping
  11. stop-gaps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stop-and-search (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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