queried

Queried is the past tense and past participle of the verb query. It means to ask a question, to request information, or to search for data in a database or knowledge system. In everyday language, one might say, for example, that someone queried a supervisor about a schedule. In computing and information management, to query a database is to issue a request for records that meet specified criteria; the phrase the database was queried indicates that a search operation was performed.

The word derives from the noun query, which comes from Old French querie and ultimately from Latin quaerere, meaning to seek. The noun query refers to a question or doubt as well as to a request for information. The verb forms include query (present), querying (present participle), and queried (past tense and past participle). The term appears in both general and technical registers, with slightly different connotations in each domain.

Usage notes: in formal or technical writing, queried often signals a deliberate investigation or verification. In journalism or research, to query a source may imply skepticism or the act of checking facts. In computing contexts, query is a precise technical term for an instruction that retrieves data from a database or knowledge base; queried data are the results of that instruction. Common misspellings include querry or querrying.