scanning

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act or process of examining or recording something systematically, point by point or section by section.

   The hospital's scanning of the patient revealed a hairline fracture.

   Faster scanning let the archive digitize thousands of pages in a week.

   Similarexamination, imaging, screening, digitization

   Note

   A process noun that usually goes uncounted and readily takes a modifier in front: ticket scanning, faster scanning. When a single event needs counting, the shorter noun scan often does the work. Philip Haigh's 2024 report has Northern paying "two pence per scan." The plural scannings belongs to technical prose, as in IGIC's Fiber Optic Sensors (1994), where a scanner performs a given number of them.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of scan.

   The technician is scanning each barcode at the checkout.

   Carefully scanning the horizon, the sailor watched for land.

   Note

   Two opposite kinds of looking hide behind this form. Scanning a contract can mean going over it closely, line by line. Scanning a crowd can mean a quick sweep in search of one face. Context decides, so add an adverb when it matters: carefully scanning, quickly scanning. With a direct object it stays a verb form. Once it takes an article or a plural, it has become the noun for the act.

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