From late Middle English scanne, from earlier scanden, from Late Latin , from Classical Latin scandō (“I climb, rise, mount”), from Proto-Indo-European *skend-.

• IPA: /skæn/

scan (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.]

   She scanned the passage carefully but could not find what she was looking for.

   • 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.

   He scanned the horizon.
   1. (computing, transitive) To inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something.

      to scan the hard drive for errors

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.

   to scan a photograph

   to scan internal organs by means of computed tomography

   Pencil drawings don't scan very well.

4. (computing, transitive) To read with an electronic device.

   to scan a barcode

   to scan a QR code

5. (obsolete, transitive, originally) To mount by steps; to go through with step by step.
   • 1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], →OCLC ↗, stanza LXIII, page 36 ↗:

     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, […]

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.

• (poetry) scansion

• French: scanner, fouiller
• Italian: scrutare
• Portuguese: varrer
• Russian: разгля́дывать
• Spanish: escrutar

• French: scanner, numériser (digital scanning), scannériser
• German: scannen, abtasten, einscannen
• Italian: scannerizzare
• Portuguese: escanear (Brazil), digitalizar
• Russian: скани́ровать
• Spanish: escanear

• French: scander
• German: skandieren
• Italian: scandire
• Portuguese: escandir
• Russian: скандировать
• Spanish: escandir

scan (plural scans)

1. Close investigation. [from 1700s]
2. (computing) An instance of scanning.

   The operators vacated the room during the scan.

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

   The doctors looked at the scans and made a diagnosis.

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.

• German: Abtastung, Scan
• Italian: scansione
• Portuguese: varredura
• Russian: скани́рование

• French: scan
• German: Scan
• Russian: скан