• what is the difference in the core meanings of the two words?
• which one is more productive in meaning?

Back

• "find" occurs more in spoken texts whereas "investigate" occurs more often in written texts
• "investigate" is a more formal word than "find"
  "investigate" has the core meaning of studying/looking into something in detail whereas "find" has the meaning plus other meanings
• "investigate" is quite often to be preceded by "to"
• "find" can be followed by "out" to form a phrasal verb (61 instances of "find out" out of a total of 483)
• when "find" is followed by "out", it has the meaning "investigate"

Back