Listen to the author reading this blog post:

by Liz Walter

My last post was about hiding things, and today I am writing about finding or discovering them.

Find is a very general word, used both for when you look for something deliberately or when you find it by accident. It is usually used to talk about an object or something you can see. For information, we are more likely to use the phrasal verb find out. Discover is used for objects and information, and tends to be used more when we find something by accident or for the first time:

I found my keys under a cushion.

How did you find out my address?

We discovered a secret door that led to a tunnel.

If you trace someone or something or track them down, you find them, usually after some effort:

The police are trying to trace the man’s family.

I managed to track down a copy of the book.

If you search out something that is difficult to find, you make an effort to find it, but if you come across something or – even more emphatically – stumble across it, you find it by accident:

We spent our evenings searching out the best restaurants.

I came across a wonderful cheese shop in one of the back streets.

I stumbled across a book of her poems.

We sometimes use the slightly formal verb locate to talk about finding the exact position of something, especially something difficult to find. If you uncover something, especially information that was secret or hidden, you find it, either deliberately or by accident. Unearth is used in a similar way, but can also be used for finding physical objects, usually ones that have been buried underground:

A plumber was trying to locate the source of the leak.

The journalist uncovered proof of the fraud.

I’ve managed to unearth some information about my great-grandfather.

He unearthed a small wooden chest when he was digging in the garden!

There are a few idioms connected with finding or discovering things. If you catch someone red-handed, you discover them in the process of doing something bad or illegal. If you run someone or something to ground, you find them after a lot of searching. If information is brought to light, it is discovered or made known, while if you get wind of something that someone was trying to keep secret, you discover information about it:

I caught her red-handed stealing my lunch from the office fridge.

A police officer ran the gunman to ground in an old warehouse.

Recent research has brought new evidence to light.

Workers somehow got wind of plans to downsize the company.

Thank you for tracking down (or stumbling across!) this post, and I hope you have discovered some useful new vocabulary here.