Detect
Detect verb - To come upon after searching, study, or effort.
Encounter is a synonym for detect in discover topic. In some cases you can use "Encounter" instead a verb "Detect", when it comes to topics like come across.
Encounter
Encounter verb - To come upon face-to-face or as if face-to-face.
Detect is a synonym for encounter in action topic. Sometimes you can use "Detect" instead a verb "Encounter", if it concerns topics such as happen upon.
Nearby Words: encountered, encountering
Mutual synonyms
Common collocations
Both words in one sentence
- In addition to the Photographic Memory required to remember all this perfectly, she must have some kind of ESP to detect such things in the first place just from a brief encounter.
- The Incident cloak is one of a new superior generation of cloaks that doesn't hinder the ship's own sensor and, at the time of the encounter, is virtually impossible to detect for both the Federation and the Romulans..
Source: Grand Theft Prototype -
In Next Encounter and the HD remake, it instead deals less than a fourth of its full damage without the scope - this is handwaved as the gun being able to detect if the user has it in a proper aiming position and somehow slowing down the bullet if not so the recoil doesn't rip his arm off.
Source: Video Game / Serious Sam
Cite this Source
Encounter and Detect. (2016). Retrieved 2026, August 15, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/detect/encounter
Detect & Encounter. N.p., 2016. Web. 15 Aug. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/detect/encounter>.
Encounter or Detect. 2016. Accessed August 15, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/detect/encounter.
Google Ngram Viewer shows how "detect" and "encounter" have occurred on timeline