Scouting

How to spell scouting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scouting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scouting mean?

1. verbGoing ahead to observe, search, or gather information about an area or situation.
2. verbSearching for talented people, especially athletes or performers, to recruit.
3. nounThe organised activities and training of the youth movement founded by Baden-Powell.

Scouting in a sentence

• verb

  The soldiers spent the morning scouting the ridge for enemy positions.

• verb

  The club is scouting for promising young strikers across the region.

• noun

  Scouting taught him to light a fire, read a map, and tie strong knots.

• verb

  We drove around the district scouting for a quieter place to live.

• verb

  She built her career scouting for new acting talent at small theatres.

• noun

  Her parents met through scouting as teenagers at a summer camp.

Where does scouting come from?

Language of origin: French

The verb 'scout' came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French 'escouter', meaning 'to listen', which itself descended from the Latin 'auscultare', 'to listen carefully' (the same root that survives in the medical word 'auscultation', the act of listening to the body). In its earliest English use a scout was someone sent ahead to listen for and observe an enemy, so the idea of attentive watching, not just hearing, quickly took over. The form 'scouting', the gerund built simply by adding '-ing', described that work of going ahead to gather information. In 1908 Robert Baden-Powell adopted the word for his new youth movement, and 'Scouting' became the name for its outdoor training and activities. The everyday spelling trap is small but real: the 'ou' sounds nothing like its spelling, echoing the silent listening buried in the Latin source.

How the word is built

• scout (to observe, spy out)
• -ing (forming a gerund/present participle)