Browsing

Part of speech: verb, noun

Pronunciation: /ˈbɹaʊzɪŋ/

Definitions

1. Glancing through items or material in a casual or leisurely way ; inspecting digital content or a webpage on a device
2. Casually scanning collections, such as books or merchandise, without a specific goal ; viewing data or websites on a computer or mobile device
3. Lightly examining or surveying items or texts for interest or choice ; navigating or exploring online resources or electronic displays

Etymology: Browsing began as a word about goats and deer. In Old French, "brouster" meant to nibble off the tender buds, sprouts and bark of plants, and it came from "brost", a shoot or bud. English borrowed the verb in the Middle English period, and for centuries it kept that animal sense: a deer browsed on young leaves, while a person did not. The shift to looking through things came much later. Once the picture of an animal grazing on a hedge had faded, the verb moved from eating to wandering over a range of items and picking out what caught the eye, first in shops and books and eventually in shelves of goods and web pages. The word's sense of skimming and sampling without a fixed purpose grew directly out of that foraging image. Browsing is a close relative of "brush", "breast" and "brut", all of which descend from the same Germanic root meaning a sprout or shoot. They reached English by different routes, so they look and sound unrelated.

Synonyms: scanning, skimming, perusing, glancing, surfing

Antonyms: ignoring, neglecting, disregarding, overlooking, bypassing