Other forms: quests, questing
A quest is a long search for something that matters — one purpose, a lot of distance, no guarantee at the end. A knight riding out after the Grail, a scientist giving thirty years to one question, a game character sent to fetch a sword from a cave.
It nearly always takes FOR: a quest for justice, a quest for the perfect loaf, in quest of somewhere warm to sit. The word keeps a ring of legend about it, so people reach for it half-seriously over small things — my quest for a decent coffee near the station. The verb exists too, a dog questing back and forth for a scent, but it belongs to books more than to speech. Games have given the word a plainer life, where a quest is a task with a reward at the end and a quest line is a chain of them. Remember that a quest is grander and longer than a search: you do not go on a quest for your keys.
1nounpursuitA long and difficult search for something important.
“His quest for the truth about his father took him to three countries.”
synonyms: search, pursuit
2nounquestA journey undertaken by a hero to find or achieve something, in stories and games.
“The knights set out on a quest to find the stolen crown.”
3verbwideTo search over a wide area for something.
“The hounds quested through the wet bracken.”
quest is a search.
The Latin is to seek, the same seeking in question. A quest is a question you have to travel a long way to answer.
hooks ontoquestion
Quest came from Old French queste, 'a search, a hunt', and behind that Latin quaesta, from quaero, 'to ask, to seek'. So quest and question are the same word arriving twice: one asks with your feet, the other with your mouth. English took the walking half in the age of knights and never gave it back.
Middle English
quest
English, today
quest
Built from
From Middle English quest. From Middle English quest, queste; partly from Anglo-Norman queste, Old French queste (“acquisition, search, hunt”), and partly from their source, Latin quaesta (“tribute, tax, inquiry, search”), noun use of quaesita, the feminine past participle of quaerō (“to ask, seek”). a doublet of question.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA