scan
AI In plain words
Writing a short explanation…
Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
scan
- /skæn/ US, UK
- /skan/ British, Northern England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales
- /skɛn/ New Zealand
Rhymes with -æn
Where it comes from
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *skend-der.
Proto-Italic *skandō
Latin scandōbor.
Middle English scanden
Middle English scanne
English scan
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 (“to climb, rise, mount”), from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to jump, dart, climb, scale, scan”).
verb scans · scanning · scanned
- To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely. She scanned the passage carefully but could not find what she was looking for.
- To inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something. to scan the hard drive for errors
- To look about for; to look over quickly.
- To perform lexical analysis; to tokenize.
- To create an image of something with the use of a scanner. to scan a photograph
- To read with an electronic device. to scan a barcode
- To mount by steps; to go through with step by step. But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, / There is a spot should not be pass'd in vain,— / Morat ! the proud, the patriot field ! where man / May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,[…]
- To read or mark so as to show a specific metre. In such cases as these, almost any one with a good ear will "scan" the verse correctly enough without instruction. It is not proposed to give here a list of Shakspere's slurred and contracted words; […]
- To conform to a metrical structure. You're right, sir, it doesn't scan very well in the English, but in the Gaelic it's sheer poetry. Have you the Gaelic?
noun scans
- Of written things, a careful reading.
- Of written things, a cursory reading: a skim.
- An instance of scanning. The operators vacated the room during the scan.
- The result or output of a scanning process. The doctors looked at the scans and made a diagnosis.
- 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.
