scanner
Pluralscanners
- 1A device that copies documents or images and converts them into a digital file.
The library installed a high-speed scanner to digitize its rare manuscripts.
He placed the photograph on the scanner and saved it as a JPEG.
Similardigitizer
- 2A handheld device that reads barcodes or QR codes to charge customers, check prices, print labels, or track items in a store or warehouse.
The stockroom clerk used a scanner to check each pallet into the warehouse.
At the register, the scanner beeped as it read every item's barcode.
Similarreader
Note
In the shop and warehouse it goes by other names too: a pricing gun, or an HHT. Its work is wider than ringing up a sale. The same handset prints stickers, answers price enquiries, books stock in and out, and finds the shelf where a click-and-collect order waits. Where the optical reader names the mechanism, this sense names the retail tool built around it.
- 3A device that uses optics to read printed data such as a barcode.
The handheld scanner uses a laser to read each barcode's pattern of stripes.
Modern scanners decode printed labels almost instantly using reflected light.
Similarreader
- 4A device that uses radiation such as ultrasound or X-rays to generate images of tissue or surfaces for diagnosis.
The radiologist positioned the patient under the scanner to capture clear images.
Hospital scanners can reveal tumors that standard film often misses.
- 5A radio receiver that steps through a sequence of frequencies to detect active signals.
The hobbyist tuned his scanner to pick up nearby emergency broadcasts.
Police scanners let listeners follow dispatch calls as they happen.
- 6A person who scans, looking over or reading through something.
A skilled scanner of documents, the editor caught errors others missed.
The lookout was a vigilant scanner of the horizon for approaching ships.
Similarreader, examiner, observer, watcher
Note
The human sense: a person rather than a machine, built from scan plus the agent suffix -er, the same pattern behind every device sense on this page. Douglas Robillard's Melville and the Visual Arts (1997) calls an elderly Melville "an eager scanner of magazines," a reader running an eye over pages. The word sits most naturally with of: a scanner of magazines, of documents, of the horizon.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of scanner apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Formed from the verb "scan" combined with the suffix "-er."