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metal-detect, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Etymology
Back-formation from metal detector.
Verb
metal-detect (third-person singular simple present metal-detects, present participle metal-detecting, simple past and past participle metal-detected)
- (ambitransitive) To use a metal detector to find metal objects on the surface or buried underground.
2013 August 2, Taft Kiser, “Open Season on History”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2021-06-03:Flowerdew has three known cemeteries, containing Woodland Indians, 1620s colonists and enslaved individuals from about 1760. All three are in the area metal-detected last March. At the Little Bighorn Battlefield, in Montana, volunteers have used their metal-detecting machines to pinpoint artifacts, whose position rewrote the story of Custer’s Last Stand.
- (transitive) To make (someone) pass through a metal detector to detect concealed metal objects.
2017 September 27, Mac McClelland, “When ‘Not Guilty’ Is a Life Sentence”, in The New York Times Magazine, archived from the original on 2020-07-04:“They’re testing you,” she said to her son, James, after she was finally cleared, metal-detected and led upstairs to the visiting room, a spare, linoleum-floored space inside the hospital’s high-security building.