Compare the following:
- How did you find the restaurant? It was excellent. I enjoyed my meal.
- How did you find the restaurant? I looked it up in a street directory.
Asking, "How did you find [something]" to query someone's opinion or experience doesn't seem to relate directly "find" in the context of locating something. Even as a metaphor, referring to the act of locating something rarely includes a description of the thing itself. Are the two uses homonymic then? Or polysemic? Why this wording? Is there some history to the phrase or word that can clarify?
Best Answer
The OED has, as the primary meaning of "find" (going back to Old English): " I. To come upon by chance or in the course of events."
Sense 4b (also found in Old English) is given as: "With object and complement or infinitive. To discover or perceive (something) to be in a specified state or condition."
This later develops [1545] into Sense 5b: "In a more subjective sense: to feel to be (agreeable, disagreeable, etc.), to consider or regard as (ridiculous, excellent, etc.)."
So the first sense of "find" noted in the question, an act of estimation, is a direct development, first occurring in the mid-sixteenth century, of a word originally found [!] in Old English, and referring to an act of locating -- the second sense in the question.