seek

Etymology

From Middle English seken (also sechen, whence dialectal English seech), from Old English sēċan (compare beseech); from Proto-West Germanic *sōkijan, from Proto-Germanic *sōkijaną (“to seek”), from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂g- (“to seek out”). Cognate with West Frisian sykje, Dutch zoeken, Low German söken, German suchen, Danish søge, Icelandic sækja, Norwegian Bokmål søke, Norwegian Nynorsk søkja, Swedish söka. The Middle English and later Modern English hard /k/ derives from Old English sēcð, the third person singular; the forms with /k/ were then reinforced by cognate Old Norse sǿkja.

verb

1. (transitive, intransitive) To try to find; to look for; to search for.
   I seek wisdom.
   Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.[…]A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale. 2013 July-August, Catherine Clabby, “Focus on Everything”, in American Scientist
2. (transitive) To ask for; to solicit; to beseech.
   I seek forgiveness through repentance.
   “My, my! It is indeed a long way yet, look you!” said the pleasant woman of whom I sought directions. 1960, Lobsang Rampa, The Rampa Story
3. (transitive) To try to acquire or gain; to strive after; to aim at.
   I sought my fortune on the goldfields.
   But persecution sought the lives of men of this character. 1880, George Q. Cannon, How the Gospel is Preached By the Elders, etc.
   I can no longer seek fame or glory, nor can I help trying to get rid of my riches, which separate me from my fellow-creatures. 1886, Constantine Popoff, translation of Leo Tolstoy's What I Believe
4. (intransitive, obsolete) To go, move, travel (in a given direction).
5. (transitive) To try to reach or come to; to go to; to resort to.
   When the alarm went off I sought the exit in a panic.
6. (intransitive, sometimes proscribed) To attempt, endeavour, try
   Our company does not seek to limit its employees from using the internet or engaging in social networking.
7. (intransitive, computing) To navigate through a stream.
   Most of the changes made to this control are to accommodate the various constraints that playback of streaming media may impose in broadcast streams, such as the inability to seek through the media. 2009, Jit Ghosh, Rob Cameron, Silverlight 2 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, page 541

noun

1. (computing) The operation of navigating through a stream.
   The number of seeks to retrieve a shot […] depends on the location of those frames on physical blocks. 2012, Aidong Zhang, Avi Silberschatz, Sharad Mehrotra, Continuous Media Databases, page 120