Did you know?
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
Niall Stanage, The Hill, 2 Nov. 2024
For this reason, since 2007 alone, civil society has formed more than 300 search groups, mostly made up of family members who scour the land guided by witness statements or organized in general brigades.
—Geraldine Castro, WIRED, 1 Nov. 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
See all Example Sentences for scour 
Dictionary Entries Near scour
Cite this Entry
“Scour.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scour. Accessed 30 Nov. 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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