Scoop

How to spell scoop

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scoop

What does scoop mean?

1. nounA deep, spoon-shaped utensil for lifting loose or soft material, or the amount it holds.
2. verbTo lift, gather, or remove something with or as if with a curved tool.
3. nounAn exclusive or important news story reported before competitors.

Scoop in a sentence

• noun

  She pressed a single scoop of ice cream into each cone.

• verb

  Please scoop the leftover rice into a sealed container.

• noun

  The young reporter landed a major scoop about the council's secret deal.

• noun

  The recipe calls for one level scoop of protein powder per glass.

• verb

  The digger began to scoop wet clay from the trench.

• noun

  Editors love a scoop that rivals have completely missed.

Where does scoop come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Scoop arrived in English around the fourteenth century from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German, where words such as schope and schoppe referred to a vessel for bailing water out of a boat and to a shovel for shifting loose material. The underlying Germanic root is connected to the idea of lifting or hollowing out, and it is a cousin of the word 'shovel'. Early English use kept the practical, hands-on meaning of a tool for ladling grain, flour, or water. From the physical act of lifting something out came the figurative verb 'to scoop', and by the late nineteenth century American journalists had borrowed it for getting a story out ahead of rivals, giving us the 'news scoop'. The doubled 'oo' simply mirrors the long vowel sound and rarely causes trouble, which is why the spelling has stayed stable for centuries.

How the word is built

• scoop (single root; no affixes, from Middle Dutch schope, a bailing vessel or shovel)