Word.ws English Dictionary

scrute

scrute verb: to examine (something) carefully; to scrutinize.

Verb

scrute (third-person singular simple present scrutes, present participle scruting, simple past and past participle scruted)

  1. (intransitive, rare, transitive) To examine (something) carefully; to scrutinize.
    • Hazard scruted the Angels with hooded eyes; the low drone of their murmured ritual chanting of "Make my day" was getting on his nerves. He turned and gloomed down at the table again.1996, William Peter Blatty, Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Fable, New York, N.Y.: Donald I. Fine Books, →ISBN, page 36
    • And folks call the Chinese inscrutable. When my elder brother's got his mind fixed on a mystery, there's just no scruting the man.2008, Steve Hockensmith, The Black Dove, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Minotaur, →ISBN, page 1

Forms of scrute

third-person singular presentscrutes
present participlescruting
past participlescruted
pastscruted

Origin of scrute

Borrowed from Latin scrūtor, scrūtārī (“to search carefully; to seek for”). Now often reanalyzed from inscrutable.

Questions about scrute

What does scrute mean?
Scrute means to examine (something) carefully; to scrutinize.
What part of speech is scrute?
Scrute is a verb.
What is the past tense of scrute?
The past tense of scrute is scruted.

Words near scrute in the dictionary

  1. scrutate
  2. scrutation
  3. scrutations
  4. scrutator
  5. scrutators
  6. scrute
  7. scruted
  8. scrutes
  9. scrutinate
  10. scrutinated
  11. scrutinates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scrute (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “scrute.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scrute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.