metal-detect

English

Etymology

Back-formation from metal detector.

Verb

metal-detect (third-person singular simple present metal-detects, present participle metal-detecting, simple past and past participle metal-detected)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To use a metal detector to find metal objects on the surface or buried underground.
   • 2013 August 2, Taft Kiser, “Open Season on History”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     Flowerdew has three known cemeteries, containing Woodland Indians, 1620s colonists and enslaved individuals from about 1760. All three are in the area metal-detected last March. […] At the Little Bighorn Battlefield, in Montana, volunteers have used their metal-detecting machines to pinpoint artifacts, whose position rewrote the story of Custer’s Last Stand.

2. (transitive) To make (someone) pass through a metal detector to detect concealed metal objects.
   • 2017 September 27, Mac McClelland, “When ‘Not Guilty’ Is a Life Sentence”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[2]:

     “They’re testing you,” she said to her son, James, after she was finally cleared, metal-detected and led upstairs to the visiting room, a spare, linoleum-floored space inside the hospital’s high-security building.