indagate

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 9, 2008 is: indagate • \IN-duh-gayt\ • verb : to search into : investigate Examples: The defense attorneys requested an adjournment so that they could fully indagate the new evidence. Did you know? A close examination of "indagate" reveals that it's a rather uncommon word. If we delve into the past, we discover that it first appeared in an English dictionary in 1623. Probing further, we see that its synonym "investigate" was already a hundred years old at the time. Despite the fact that our search turns up the derivatives "indagation," "indagator," "indagatory," and "indagative," we see that none of these words was ever used as widely as "investigation," "investigator," "investigatory," and "investigative." If we hunt for the etymology of "indagate," we sniff out the Latin verb "indagare" ("to track"), which often referred, as did Latin "investigare," specifically to tracking done by hunting dogs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.