"Intersect something against","match something against", or &

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Dear all,

I need to express my idea in English but I found it a little bit difficult. I have a word and I need to find its existence and place in a sentence. For example, the word “apple” and the sentence “The boy ate the apple”. Here apple appears in the sentence and it is the fifth word, while orange does not exist in the sentence. I want to explain this in English. Should I say. We intersect the word against the sentence to check its existence, or we match the word with the sentence to check its existence?
Generally, when you try to look for a certain term in a sentence by checking every word in the sentence can we say:

  • match … against the sentence
  • match … with the sentence
  • intersect… against the sentence

thanks in advance,
Audry

2

‘Intersect’ is definitely wrong.

‘Match’ is just about possible, I suppose, but it doesn’t sound quite right as you are not really matching the word and the sentence… Personally I’d just say:
we look for the word in the sentence
or
we check for the word in the sentence.