scour
pronunciation
How to pronounce scour in British English:
UK [ˈskaʊə(r)]
How to pronounce scour in American English:
US [ˈskaʊər]
-
- Noun:
- a place that is scoured (especially by running water)
-
- Verb:
- examine minutely
- clean with hard rubbing
- rub hard or scrub
- rinse, clean, or empty with a liquid
Word Origin
- scour
- scour: [13] The notion of ‘cleaning’ implicit in scour evolved from an earlier ‘take care of’. For the word goes back ultimately to Latin cūrāre (source of English cure), which originally meant ‘take care of’, and only in medieval times came to mean ‘clean’. Combination with the prefix ex- ‘out’ produced excūrāre ‘clean out’, which reached English via Old French escurer and Middle Dutch scūren. Scour ‘search thoroughly’ [14] (as in ‘scour the countryside’) is a different word, and may come from Old Norse skýra ‘rush in’.=> cure
- scour (v.1)
- "cleanse by hard rubbing," c. 1200, from Middle Dutch scuren, schuren "to polish, to clean," and from Old French escurer, both from Late Latin excurare "clean off," literally "take good care of," from Latin ex- "out" (see ex-) + curare "care for, take care of" (see cure (v.)). Possibly originally a technical term among Flemish workmen in England. Related: Scoured; scouring. As a noun, 1610s, from the verb.
- scour (v.2)
- "move quickly in search of something," c. 1300, probably from Old Norse skyra "rush in," related to skur "storm, shower, shower of missiles" (see shower (n.)). Perhaps influenced by or blended with Old French escorre "to run out," from Latin excurrere (see excursion). Sense probably influenced by scour (v.1).
Example
- 1. Many scour the internet for special deals .
- 2. To judge from these novels that scour the past and mourn the future , it seems nobody won .
- 3. Wickr does not scour any social networks or other systems to discover existing relationships , and exposes nothing to the outside world .
- 4. I scour the script and write down everything the character says about himself and everything that everyone else says about him .
- 5. On sunday , north korea observers will scour pyongyang 's annual new year 's message for other clues about the direction of the country under kim jong eun .