Dictionary Definition
enquire
Verb
1 inquire about; "I asked about their special
today"; "He had to ask directions several times" [syn: ask, inquire]
2 conduct an inquiry or investigation of; "The
district attorney's office investigated reports of possible
irregularities"; "inquire into the disappearance of the rich old
lady" [syn: investigate, inquire]
3 have a wish or desire to know something; "He
wondered who had built this beautiful church" [syn: wonder, inquire]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Alternative spellings
- inquire (US)
Translations
to ask about something
- Finnish: tiedustella
to make an enquiry
- Finnish: tiedustella
Usage notes
In the USA, inquire is generally used in place of enquire. Where enquire is used (particularly in the UK), it means a non-official enquiry (such as to ask a question), whereas inquire is used in legal or government context where official transcripts are generated. In the USA, this distinction is not made and inquire is used generally.Related terms
Extensive Definition
ENQUIRE was an early project (in the second half
of 1980) of Tim
Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide
Web in 1989. ENQUIRE had some of the same ideas as the Web and
the Semantic Web
but was different in several important ways, one of them that it
was not supposed to be released to the general public. ENQUIRE was
implemented on a Norsk Data
machine.
According to Berners-Lee (2000), the name was
inspired by a book called
Enquire Within Upon Everything.
Rather than a web browser,
ENQUIRE was closer to a wiki:
- database, though a closed system (all of the data could be taken as a workable whole)
- bidirectional hyperlinks (in Wikipedia and MediaWiki, this is the What links here feature). This bidirectionnality allows ideas, notes, etc. to link to each other without the author being aware of this. In a way, they (or, at least, their relationships) get a life on their own.
- direct editing from the server (like wikis and CMS/blogs)
- ease of compositing, particularly when it comes to hyperlinking.
See also
External links
References
Berners-Lee, T. (2000). Weaving the web. The original design and ultimate destiny of the world wide web. NY: Harper Business.enquire in Polish: ENQUIRE
enquire in French: ENQUIRE
enquire in Japanese: ENQUIRE
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
ask, ask a
question, ask about, ask questions, be curious, bring into
question, burn with curiosity, demand, dig around for, dig up,
gape, gawk, inquire, inquire of, interpellate, interrogate, make inquiry,
nose around for, nose out, peer, propose a question, propound
a question, put queries, query, question, quiz, require an answer, rubber, rubberneck, seek, stare, want to
know