scrutiny
Formsscrutinies, scrutinying, scrutinied
- 1Careful and thorough examination of a situation or case.
The proposed merger faced intense scrutiny from financial regulators.
Her travel expenses came under scrutiny during the year-end audit.
Similarexamination, investigation, inspection, review, analysis
Note
The institutional side of the word, where regulators, auditors and commissions weigh proposals, mergers and accounts. Its signature construction is come under scrutiny. The case under examination is the subject, and the examiners stay in the background. Trains Illustrated in 1960 uses it of the Interstate Commerce Commission weighing railroad mergers. Where close study fixes on a person or object, this sense weighs a whole case.
- 2Close, intense study directed at a person or thing.
The celebrity lives under constant scrutiny from the press.
His every decision was subject to scrutiny by the board.
Similarexamination, inspection, observation, surveillance, review
Note
A word that began among the rubbish: Medieval Latin scrūtinium, "a search", goes back through a verb for searching thoroughly to Late Latin scrūta, "broken trash". In English it readily takes a comparative. Milton writes of "narrower scrutiny" in Paradise Regain'd (1671), and "upon closer scrutiny" is the familiar phrase that introduces what a second, harder look reveals.
- 3A committee's examination of the votes cast at an election, carried out to correct the poll.
The defeated candidate demanded a scrutiny of the disputed ballots.
Parliament ordered a scrutiny to settle the contested result.
Note
Election law has its own use for the word, and it is a countable one: a candidate demands a scrutiny, and an official makes one. William Dougal Christie's The Ballot (1872) speaks of the day appointed for the Returning Officer "to make a scrutiny of the poll", pairing the word with poll. Its paper counterpart is the voting slip itself, which is also called a scrutiny.
- 4A small slip or billet of paper on which a vote is written.
Each voter folded his scrutiny and dropped it into the urn.
The teller collected every scrutiny before reading the votes aloud.
Similarballot
- 5A church examination of people preparing for baptism, held in the last week of Lent before their baptism on Easter Day.
The priest conducted the scrutiny of the candidates in the week before Easter.
Each catechumen passed a scrutiny during the final week of Lent.
Note
A liturgical term from the Christian preparation for baptism. Catechumens are those still under instruction and not yet baptized, and the scrutiny tested them as Lent closed and their Easter baptism approached. Here the word names a single rite rather than a quality of attention, so it is used with an article: a scrutiny, the scrutiny.
Less common meaning
- 6To examine and inspect something closely and carefully.
The auditors were appointed to scrutiny the treasury's records.
Learned men gathered to scrutiny the disputed text line by line.
Note
A verb made straight from the noun with no suffix, and now both obsolete and rare. Its forms follow the noun's spelling (scrutinies, scrutinying, scrutinied), so "they scrutinied the accounts" reads like a slip to a modern eye. In present-day writing, scrutinize carries the same meaning. Keep this form for quoting or imitating older prose.
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Origin
It comes from Middle English scrutiny, from Medieval Latin scrūtinium ('a search, an inquiry'), which traces back through Vulgar Latin scrūtor ('to search or examine thoroughly') and Late Latin scrūta ('rubbish, broken trash'), ultimately from an extension of the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)ker- ('to cut').