Synonyms of scouring

scouring

verb

present participle of scour

as in searching

to look through (as a place) carefully or thoroughly in an effort to find or discover something

the police scoured the city for the Typhoid Mary of this latest epidemic

Synonyms & Similar Words

• searching
• combing
• finding
• scanning
• surveying
• exploring
• locating
• raking
• rummaging
• examining
• investigating
• trolling
• dredging
• ransacking
• inspecting
• digging (through)
• hunting (through)
• sorting (through)
• discovering
• reviewing
• rifling
• scrutinizing
• detecting
• ascertaining
• determining
• learning
• auditing
• studying
• perusing
• probing
• checking (out)
• browsing
• tracking (down)
• hitting (on or upon)
• prospecting
• snooping
• frisking
• finding out
• getting
• running down
• poking (around)
• ferreting (out)
• shaking down
• looking over
• patting down
• glancing (over)
• descrying
• skirmishing
• grubbing (about)
• scaring up

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• hiding
• losing
• ignoring
• abandoning
• neglecting

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of scouring

The ad, which centers on a fictional family scouring their community for their missing dog, demonstrates how the Search Party feature activates neighboring Ring home cameras to be used in the search. —Mason Leib, ABC News, 14 Feb. 2026

When scouring the web, Girard had another Grace's wedding dress top of mind, actress-princess Grace Kelly. —Hannah Kirby, jsonline.com, 14 Feb. 2026

To guess the winner of the Tour de France, for example, a human forecaster might spend hours building a basic regression model based on previous years’ results, while also scouring injury and conditioning reports and reading commentary from fans and experts. —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 11 Feb. 2026

Casting directors have been scouring communities right across the UK and even in the United States looking for Billies. —Baz Bamigboye, Deadline, 11 Feb. 2026