browse

From Middle English browsen, from Old French brouster, broster (“to nibble off buds, sprouts, and bark; browse”), from brost (“a sprout, shoot, bud”), from a Germanic source, perhaps Frankish *brust (“shoot, bud”), from Proto-Germanic *brustiz (“bud, shoot”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrews- (“to swell, sprout”). Cognate with Bavarian Bross, Brosst (“a bud”), Old Saxon brustian (“to sprout”). Doublet of brut, breast, and brush.

• IPA^(key): /bɹaʊz/

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• Homophone: brows
• Rhymes: -aʊz

browse (third-person singular simple present browses, present participle browsing, simple past and past participle browsed)

1. To scan, to casually look through in order to find items of interest, especially without knowledge of what to look for beforehand.

   I'm just browsing around.

   I stopped in several bookstores to browse.

   • 1878, Henry James, An International Episode‎^[1]:

     At Hampton Court the little flocks of visitors are not provided with an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion upon the local antiquities.

   • 1919, Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, →OCLC:

     The little room in which he found himself was plainly the bookseller's sanctum, and contained his own private library. Gilbert browsed along the shelves curiously. The volumes were mostly shabby and bruised; they had evidently been picked up one by one in the humble mangers of the second-hand vendor.

2. To move about while sampling, such as with food or products on display.
3. (transitive, computing) To navigate through hyperlinked documents on a computer, usually with a browser.
   • 1990 November 12, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, “WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project”, in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)‎^[3]:

     HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.

4. (intransitive, of an animal) To move about while eating parts of plants, especially plants other than pasture, such as shrubs or trees.
   • 1910, Zane Grey, The Heritage of the Desert‎^[4]:

     Sheep ranged everywhere under the low cedars. They browsed with noses in the frost, and from all around came the tinkle of tiny bells on the curly-horned rams, and an endless variety of bleats.

   • 1997, Kent Grant, “Wildlife Values of Conservation”, in Colorado State Forest Service‎^[5], archived from the original on 11 June 2010:

     Also, when planting to provide a source of browse for wintering deer and elk, protect seedlings from browsing during the first several years; an electric fence enclosure can offer effective protection.

5. (archaic) To feed on, as pasture; to pasture on; to graze.
   • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Gardener’s Daughter; or, The Pictures”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 21:

     The fields between / Are dewy-fresh, brows'd by deep-udder'd kine, […]

   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:

     “If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?”

browse (countable and uncountable, plural browses)

1. (uncountable) Young shoots and twigs.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     And with their horned feet the greene gras wore, / The whiles their Gotes upon the brouzes fedd […]

   • 1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, / On browz, and corn, and flowery meadows feed.

2. (uncountable) Fodder for cattle and other animals.
   • 1910, Zane Grey, The Heritage of the Desert‎^[6]:

     The Grand Canyon seems to us Mormons to mark the line. There's enough browse here to feed a hundred thousand cattle. But water's the thing.

   • 1997, Colorado State Forest Service‎^[7]:

     Also, when planting to provide a source of browse for wintering deer and elk, protect seedlings from browsing during the first several years; an electric fence enclosure can offer effective protection.

   • 2007, Texas Parks and Wildlife Service‎^[8]:

     In the Panhandle Area, bison eat browse that includes mesquite and elm.

3. (countable) The act of browsing through something.

   I had a browse in the old bookshop.

4. (countable) That which one browses through; something to read.
   • 1899, Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.:

     Here he buried himself in a close-printed, thickish volume which had been his chosen browse for some time.

5. (Cornwall, fishing, uncountable) Bruised fish used as bait.
   • 1873, William Bottrell, Traditions and hearthside stories of west Cornwall (page 145)

     He cast in his hook-and-line, intending to take one fish only for his supper, from the multitude that always came around the rock on which he stood as soon as he cast in "browse" (garbage to attract fish).

• “browse”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “browse”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

• Bowers, Bowser, bowers, bowres, bowser

browse (imperative brows, present browser, past browsede, past participle browset)

1. (computing) to browse

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browse

1. inflection of browsen:
   1. first-person singular present indicative
   2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
   3. imperative
   4. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive

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browse

1. inflection of browsen:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. first/third-person singular subjunctive I
   3. singular imperative