漁る

• Reading: あさる
• Romaji: asaru
• Kanji breakdown: 漁 (ryō/asa) — fishing, hunting, foraging
• Pronunciation: /a.sa.ɾɯ/

Meaning

To search through; to rummage; to forage or fish for. Implies an active, sometimes frantic search through a collection of things.

A Group 1 (godan) verb. Literally means to fish or hunt for food, but in modern usage it almost always describes rummaging through shelves, bags, or databases to find something. The connotation is often of searching greedily or carelessly. Common collocations include 情報を漁る (trawl for information) and 棚を漁る (rummage through shelves).

Examples

1. 古書店の棚を漁って、絶版になった詩集をようやく見つけた。 I rummaged through the shelves of a secondhand bookshop and finally found an out-of-print poetry collection.
2. 空腹で帰宅し、冷蔵庫を漁ったが食べられるものが何もなかった。 I came home hungry and rummaged through the fridge, but there was nothing edible.
3. ネットで情報を漁るだけでは、問題の本質は見えてこない。 Simply trawling the internet for information will not reveal the true nature of a problem.

Usage Guide

Context: daily life, internet, shopping, research

Tone: neutral

Origin & History

From 漁 (ryō/asa), the character for fishing or hunting. The godan verb suffix gives it the sense of actively engaging in that search. The shift from literal fishing to figurative searching is well established in modern Japanese.

Cultural Context

Era: Contemporary

Generation: All ages

Social background: General