An act of searching for information, typically in a reference source or database. In computing, a process of finding data using a key or identifier.
Compound word from 'look' (Middle English 'loken') + 'up' (Old English 'upp'). Originally meant literally looking upward, but developed the informational search meaning in the 20th century with dictionaries and databases.
The vertical metaphor in 'lookup' reflects how we traditionally organized information hierarchically, from alphabetical order to database indexes. Even in our digital age, we still 'look up' information, preserving this spatial metaphor for mental searching.
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