scan

English Online Dictionary. What means scan‎? What does scan mean?

English

Etymology

From late Middle English scanne (“to mark off verse to show metrical structure”), from earlier scanden, from Late Latin scandere (“to scan verse”), from Classical Latin scandō (“I climb, rise, mount”), from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to jump, dart, climb, scale, scan”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /skæn/
• Rhymes: -æn

Verb

scan (third-person singular simple present scans, present participle scanning, simple past and past participle scanned)

1. (transitive) To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely. [from 16th C.]
   • 1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter ii:

     Yet the incident did not in the least diminish my respect for my teacher. I was by nature blind to the faults of elders. Later I came to know of many other failings of this teacher, but my regard for him remained the same. For I had learnt to carry out the orders of elders, not to scan their actions.
   1. (computing, transitive) To inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something.

2. (transitive) To look about for; to look over quickly. [from 19th C.]
   1. (computing, transitive) To perform lexical analysis; to tokenize.
3. (computing, medicine, transitive) To create an image of something with the use of a scanner.

4. (computing, transitive) To read with an electronic device.
5. (obsolete, transitive, originally) To mount by steps; to go through with step by step.
6. (poetry, transitive) To read or mark so as to show a specific metre. [from 14th C.]
7. (poetry, intransitive) To conform to a metrical structure.

Usage notes

• The contranym status of the word is discussed at peruse § Usage notes.

Derived terms

• forescan

Related terms

• (poetry): scansion

Descendants

• ⇒ Lithuanian: skenuoti

Translations

Noun

scan (plural scans)

1. Close investigation. [from 1700s]
   1. (of written things) A careful reading.

      Synonym: perusal

   2. (of written things) A cursory reading: a skim.

      Synonym: perusal

2. (computing) An instance of scanning.
3. (computing) The result or output of a scanning process.

4. (functional programming) A higher-order function that applies a binary operation to a sequence of values, starting with an accumulator, and returns a new sequence with the results.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• pan and scan
• scanlate
• scanlation
• scanlator
• scanner

Further reading

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “scan”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• “scan”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “scan”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “scan”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• ANCs, CNAs, CNSA, NCSA, NSCA, cans

Old English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃɑːn/

Verb

sċān

1. first/third-person singular preterite indicative of sċīnan

Romanian

Noun

scan m (plural scani)

1. Obsolete form of scaun.

Declension

References

• scan in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN