inquiry

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of inquiring.
• noun A question; a query.
• noun A close examination of a matter.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Search for truth, information, or knowledge; examination into facts or principles: as, an inquiry into the truth of a report.
• noun The act of inquiring; a seeking for information by asking questions; interrogation; inquisition.
• noun A question; an interrogation; a query.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of inquiring; a seeking for information by asking questions; interrogation; a question or questioning.
• noun Search for truth, information, or knowledge; examination into facts or principles; research; investigation.
• noun See under Court.
• noun a writ issued in certain actions at law, where the defendant has suffered judgment to pass against him by default, in order to ascertain and assess the plaintiff's damages, where they can not readily be ascertained by mere calculation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of inquiring; a seeking of information by asking questions; interrogation; a question or questioning.
• noun Search for truth, information, or knowledge; examination of facts or principles; research; investigation; as, physical inquiries.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a search for knowledge
• noun a systematic investigation of a matter of public interest
• noun an instance of questioning