Scour

WORD OF THE DAY

scour / verb / SKOW-er

Definition
1a: to rub hard especially with a rough material for cleansing
1b: to remove by rubbing hard and washing
2 (archaic): to clear (a region) of enemies or outlaws
3a: to clean by purging
3b: purge
4: to remove dirt and debris from (something, such as a pipe or ditch)
5: to free from foreign matter or impurities by or as if by washing
6: to clear, dig, or remove by or as if by a powerful current of water
7: to perform a process of scouring
8: to suffer from diarrhea or dysentery
9: to become clean and bright by rubbing
10: a place scoured by running water
11: scouring action (as of a glacier)
12: diarrhea, dysentery
13: damage done by scouring action
14: to move about quickly especially in search
15: to go through or range over in or as if in a search

Example
“Many business owners don’t realize that they need to check if their brand name is available before setting it in stone. There are plenty of online tools that will scour the web to find websites and social media profiles that match a brand name you're thinking about.”
— Syed Balkhi, Forbes, 22 July 2022

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”)