comb

A comb is most often the toothed tool used for grooming hair. It helps separate hair strands, untangle knots, and make a style neat and tidy. The same word is also used for a honeycomb, the wax structure bees build in their hives with many small cells to hold honey and raise young.

You can also use comb as a verb. When you comb through documents, papers, or even a crowd, you mean to look through everything carefully and in detail. It works like the tool moving through tangled hair, slowly and thoroughly.

The word comb has both noun and verb uses, and they all share one idea: making order out of something messy. As a noun, it is the row of teeth used to clean, arrange, and untangle hair. As another noun, a comb is the wax grid built by bees, with many repeating cells where honey is stored and larvae are raised.

As a verb, to comb means to run a comb (or your fingers) through hair. In a wider sense, it can mean to examine something thoroughly: you can comb through old photos, notes, files, or sand on a beach when searching for what is missing. In each case, it is about careful, repeated checking, not just quick looking.