Scanner

How to spell scanner

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scanner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scanner mean?

1. nounA device that reads documents, images, barcodes, or signals and converts them into electronic data.
2. nounA machine that produces detailed images of the inside of the body, such as a CT or MRI unit.

Scanner in a sentence

• The office scanner turns paper contracts into searchable files.

• The hospital installed a new MRI scanner in the radiology wing.

• At the checkout, the scanner beeped as it read each barcode.

• She lay still inside the scanner while it photographed her spine.

Where does scanner come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word grows out of the verb 'scan', which English took from the Latin scandere, literally meaning 'to climb'. In late Latin the verb was applied to poetry: to scan a line of verse was to step through it foot by foot, marking its rhythm, almost as if climbing it. English borrowed this metrical sense in the late Middle Ages, and over time 'scan' broadened to mean examining something carefully point by point, and then, conversely, glancing over it quickly. The noun 'scanner' was formed by adding the agent and instrument suffix -er, and it became common in the twentieth century for machines that sweep across a surface to read or capture information, such as radar, medical imagers, and document readers. The spelling trap is the doubled n: because the base word 'scan' ends in a single n after a short vowel, adding -er forces that consonant to double, giving scanner rather than 'scaner'.

How the word is built

• scan (from Latin scandere, to climb or to scan verse)
• -ner (doubled consonant
• -er agent/instrument suffix)