Scan

How to spell scan

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scan

What does scan mean?

1. verbTo look over something, either by examining it carefully or by glancing at it quickly.
2. verbTo pass a barcode, image, or document through a device that converts or reads it electronically.
3. nounAn image or examination produced by a medical or electronic scanning device.

Scan in a sentence

• verb

  She paused to scan the menu before ordering.

• verb

  The cashier will scan each item at the till.

• noun

  The doctor booked a scan to check his shoulder.

• verb

  The guard will scan each face in the crowd for anyone suspicious.

• verb

  You can scan the receipt and store it as a digital file.

• noun

  The brain scan revealed nothing unusual.

Where does scan come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Scan traces back to the Latin verb scandere, which literally meant 'to climb' or 'to step up'. In late Latin it acquired the specialised sense of marking the rising and falling beats of poetry, since reciting metrical verse was felt to involve a stepping rhythm. English borrowed it in the late 1300s, first meaning 'to analyse the metre of a line of verse', counting its stressed and unstressed syllables. From this careful, point-by-point reading the meaning broadened to 'to examine closely', and then, somewhat paradoxically, to 'to glance over quickly', the two opposite senses that still coexist today. In the twentieth century the word leapt into technology, describing how a machine sweeps systematically across an image, a barcode, or the human body, which is why a hospital ____ and a checkout ____ share the same humble Latin root.

How the word is built

• scan (from Latin scandere: to climb, later to scan verse)