Meaning & use
field of inquiry
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Meaning
nouncountable
A particular area of knowledge or subject that scholars or scientists study and try to understand.
Grammar: Usually followed by an adjective or a description: a new field of inquiry.
Patterns
- a field of inquiry in something
- a new field of inquiry
Climate science has become a major field of inquiry in the last fifty years.
Her thesis opened up a new field of inquiry in linguistics.
The two professors work in quite different fields of inquiry.
Word forms
| plural | fields of inquiry |
|---|
Common combinations
- a new field of inquiry
- The discovery created a new field of inquiry.
- a broad field of inquiry
- Psychology is a broad field of inquiry.
- open up a field of inquiry
- The telescope opened up a field of inquiry that had never existed.
- a promising field of inquiry
- Gene therapy is a promising field of inquiry.
- outside the field of inquiry
- Such questions fall outside the field of inquiry of this study.
Synonyms and how they differ
- field of study
- Field of study is more common and used for what a student specializes in, while field of inquiry suggests active research and questioning.
- discipline
- A discipline is an established academic subject like history, whereas a field of inquiry can be new or cross several subjects.
- area of research
- Area of research is plainer and narrower, usually naming a specific topic.
- domain
- Domain is a more abstract word for the whole range of a subject.
Word family
Commonly confused: field of inquiry or inquiry?
field of inquiry vs inquiry
Inquiry and enquiry are variant spellings; enquiry is more British, and some British writers use inquiry only for formal investigations.
Practice
The discovery of DNA opened up an entirely new ___ for biologists.
Choose one answer.
A field of inquiry is an area of study. Field of view and playing field have unrelated meanings, and a field trip is an outing, not a subject.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “field of inquiry”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.