HUNT DOWN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hunt down mean? 

• HUNT DOWN (verb)
  The verb HUNT DOWN has 1 sense:

1. pursue for food or sport (as of wild animals)

  Familiarity information: HUNT DOWN used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HUNT DOWN (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pursue for food or sport (as of wild animals)

Classified under:

Verbs of fighting, athletic activities

Synonyms:

hunt; hunt down; run; track down

Context example:

The Duke hunted in these woods

Hypernyms (to "hunt down" is one way to...):

capture; catch (capture as if by hunting, snaring, or trapping)

Verb group:

hunt (search (an area) for prey)

run (cause an animal to move fast)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "hunt down"):

seal (hunt seals)

forage; scrounge (collect or look around for (food))

fowl (hunt fowl)

falcon (hunt with falcons)

hawk (hunt with hawks)

jack; jacklight (hunt with a jacklight)

foxhunt (hunt foxes, on horseback and with dogs)

course (hunt with hounds)

ferret (hunt with ferrets)

snipe (hunt or shoot snipe)

poach (hunt illegally)

fowl (hunt fowl in the forest)

rabbit (hunt rabbits)

drive ((hunting) search for game)

drive ((hunting) chase from cover into more open ground)

turtle (hunt for turtles, especially as an occupation)

ambush; still-hunt (hunt (quarry) by stalking and ambushing)

whale (hunt for whales)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

 Context examples 

Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic, monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercest mammals, still exist. (Cries of Bosh! Prove it! How do YOU know? Question!)

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I knew not what wild beast we were about to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured, from the bearing of this master huntsman, that the adventure was a most grave one—while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic gloom boded little good for the object of our quest.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When they got out the other day, which was some years before their full term, they set themselves, as you perceive, to hunt down the traitor and to avenge the death of their comrade upon him.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That these monsters should tear each other to pieces was a part of the strange struggle for existence, but that they should turn upon modern man, that they should deliberately track and hunt down the predominant human, was a staggering and fearsome thought.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)