| / English Dictionary |
FIGURE OUT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Find the solution to (a problem or question) or understand the meaning of
Example:
He could not work the math problem
Synonyms:
figure out; lick; puzzle out; solve; work; work out
Classified under:
Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting
Hypernyms (to "figure out" is one way to...):
understand (know and comprehend the nature or meaning of)
"Figure out" entails doing...:
reason (think logically)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "figure out"):
answer; resolve (understand the meaning of)
riddle (explain a riddle)
strike (arrive at after reckoning, deliberating, and weighing)
guess; infer (guess correctly; solve by guessing)
answer (give the correct answer or solution to)
break (find the solution or key to)
Sentence frame:
Somebody ----s something
Context examples:
There's a new record holder for brightest pulsar ever found — and astronomers are still trying to figure out how it can shine so brightly.
(NuSTAR Helps Find Universe's Brightest Pulsars, NASA)
One thing we are still trying to figure out is how big that effect actually is.
(Estimating how pollen particles in the atmosphere influence climate, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
While the team was trying to figure out how to conserve energy and keep our core heated, the engineers came up with a completely new way out of the problem: Jump Jupiter's shadow.
(NASA's Juno Navigators Enable Jupiter Cyclone Discovery, NASA)
And we went through several years of this process to figure out that nothing else but life makes detectable amounts of phosphine.
(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
The find could help researchers better figure out how the giant creatures actually looked before they became extinct some 160 million years ago.
(Dinosaur Tail Found in Myanmar, VOA News)
"I think that when we have those kinds of options to look at, we should look at them without having to spend decades trying to figure out exactly how they work."
(Vitamin C Might Shorten Tuberculosis Treatment Time, Study Indicates, VOA/Steve Baragona)
“We need to figure out what specific aspect of the ultra-processed foods affected people’s eating behavior and led them to gain weight,” said Kevin D. Hall, the study’s lead author.
(Heavily processed foods cause overeating and weight gain, National Institutes of Health)
I have another little puzzle to try to figure out.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
“We started examining the skull very carefully, looking at it from all angles, trying to figure out how neutrophils are getting to the brain,” said Dr. Nahrendorf.
(Researchers unearth secret tunnels between the skull and the brain, National Institutes of Health)
An orbiting planet moving through the magnetosphere of the brown dwarf could be generating a current, but scientists will have to map the aurora to figure out its source.
(Powerful Auroras Found at Brown Dwarf, NASA)
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