Word of the Day
: April 15, 2010scour
playWhat It Means
1 : to move about quickly especially in search
2 : to go through or range over in or as if in a search
scour in Context
"Then came the excitement of trying to locate the fallen quail, and now the dog became a major partner, for he scoured the terrain this way and that.…" (James Michener, Texas, 1985)
Did You Know?
There are two verbs "scour" in English. One means to clean something by rubbing it hard with a rough object; that sense, from the 14th century, probably derives via Middle Dutch and Old French from a Late Latin verb meaning "to clean off." Today’s "scour," however, dates from the 13th century and is believed to derive via Middle English from Old Norse "skŪr," meaning "shower" (it also shares a distant relationship with our word "shower"). Many disparate things can be scoured. For example, one can scour an area (as in "scoured the woods in search of the lost dog") or publications (as in "scouring magazine and newspaper articles").
