Definition of "scan"

scan

/skæn/

verb
third-person singular simple present scans, present participle scanning, simple past and past participle scanned
1. (transitive) To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.
  Quotations
  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.
  1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter ii
  As the 1857 to Manchester Piccadilly rolls in, I scan the windows and realise there are plenty of spare seats, so I hop aboard. The train is a '221'+'220' combo to allow for social distancing - a luxury on an XC train as normally you're playing sardines, so I make the most of it.
  2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 68
2. (transitive) To look about for; to look over quickly.
  1. (computing, transitive) To inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something.
  2. (computing, transitive) To perform lexical analysis; to tokenize.
3. (computing, medicine, transitive) To create an image of something with the use of a scanner.
4. (computing, transitive) To read with an electronic device.
5. (obsolete, transitive, originally) To mount by steps; to go through with step by step.
  Quotations
  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, […]
  1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], stanza LXIII, page 36
6. (poetry, transitive) To read or mark so as to show a specific metre.
  Quotations
  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; […]
  1886, Francis Barton Gummere, A Handbook of Poetics for Students of English Verse, page 218
7. (poetry, intransitive) To conform to a metrical structure.
  Quotations
  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?
  1998, Milton Acorn, Cedric Smith, edited by James Deahl, The Road to Charlottetown: A Play‎, UnMon Northland
noun
plural scans
1. Close investigation.
2. (computing) An instance of scanning.
3. (computing) The result or output of a scanning process.
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.

Definition of "scan"

scan

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

noun