peruse Add to list Share. Traditionally, peruse has meant to read or examine something carefully. But informally, it can have the opposite meaning, to read something casually and quickly.
How would you use perusing in a sentence?
Perusing sentence example
- He began perusing a fat envelope of Midwest travel information secured for his July Iowa bike tour. ...
- Still, we sometimes found ourselves perusing a report out of pure curiosity. ...
- Evelyn turned to the paintings she'd been perusing .
Is peruse a common word?
This meaning gave rise to another, more general meaning: "to examine or consider with attention and in detail." Peruse in this sense was common: Shakespeare used it in Romeo & Juliet ("Let me peruse this face") and Milton used it in Paradise Lost ("My self I then perus'd, and Limb by Limb Survey'd").
