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It doesn’t require much scouring of our website to see that there are two distinct scour verbs in English. One has meanings relating to cleaning and washing away; that scour, which dates back to at least the early 14th century, probably comes from the Late Latin excurare, meaning “to clean off.” (A related noun scour refers to the action of this type of scouring, or to places that have been scoured, as by running water.) The other verb scour appeared a century earlier, and may come from the Old Norse skūr, meaning “shower.” (Skūr is also distantly related to the Old English scūr, the ancestor of our English word shower.) Many different things can be scoured, such as an area (as in “scoured the woods in search of the lost dog”) or publications (as in “scouring magazine and newspaper articles”).
Synonyms
Examples of scour in a Sentence
Michael Ruiz, Fox News, 30 Apr. 2024
Authorities frantically scoured the North Atlantic Ocean for days only to eventually determine the small vessel had catastrophically imploded, killing its five passengers instantly.
—Mack Degeurin, Popular Science, 25 Apr. 2024
Rescuers scoured the park from April 3 to April 8 for Bretsch, using police dogs, ground search teams, a drone and horses but still couldn’t find her, Young said.
—Helena Wegner, Sacramento Bee, 19 Apr. 2024
Ultimately, human hands inside plastic gloves this summer will haul debris from the water and scour the creek banks for more.
—Bill Laytner, Detroit Free Press, 11 Apr. 2024
As the team scoured the field, one of the searchers saw something glistening in the dirt, according to an April 9 news release from the Muzeum Historii Ziemi Kamieńskiej, or the Kamień Land History Museum.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 10 Apr. 2024
Robb Report’s writers and editors scour the world of luxury to highlight the very best, from personal aircraft to restaurants to automobiles (and beyond).
—Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 16 Apr. 2024
That reputation is so deeply scoured into the club’s soul that Bayer Leverkusen has patented the German equivalent, Vizekusen.
—Christopher F. Schuetze, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2024
Some have cheered the prospect of population deceleration on a finite planet scoured by resource extraction, saying fewer children would allow wealth to be spread more evenly.
—Riley Robinson, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Mar. 2024
Zoe Denenberg, Bon Appétit, 17 Oct. 2023
Stick to the gentler blue scour pads, or the scrubby side of your sponge, or a Scrub Daddy/Mommy.
—Alex Beggs, Bon Appétit, 16 Nov. 2020
But the trace fossils—scrapes and scours in the rock—reveal the shape and behavior of animals that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2023
Again, when the cold air scours out of the region is key to determining what type of precipitation Portland will see.
—oregonlive, 24 Feb. 2023
Initially the city’s lakefront included a gravel parking lot, large stones and rip rap — stones and materials intentionally placed to help protect shoreline structures against scour and water, wave or ice erosion.
—Carrie Napoleon, chicagotribune.com, 4 June 2021
Stick to the gentler blue scour pads, the scrubby side of your sponge, or a Scrub Daddy/Mommy.
—Alex Beggs, Bon Appétit, 10 Feb. 2023
This complicated system is meant to prevent scour (erosion) of the landscape and flooding that can endanger homes.
—Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post, 23 Oct. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'scour.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near scour
Cite this Entry
“Scour.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scour. Accessed 3 May. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
scour
1 of 3 verbscour
2 of 3 verbscour
3 of 3 nounMedical Definition
scour
1 of 2 intransitive verbscour
2 of 2 noun
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