Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use scan in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Scan means to examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely. Example: “She scanned the passage carefully but could not find what she was looking for.”

Examples of scan by meaning

verbTo examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.

  • She scanned the passage carefully but could not find what she was looking for.
  • He scanned the horizon.
  • For I had learnt to carry out the orders of elders, not to scan their actions.1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter ii

verbTo inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something.

  • to scan the hard drive for errors

verbTo create an image of something with the use of a scanner.

  • to scan a photograph
  • to scan internal organs by means of computed tomography
  • Pencil drawings don't scan very well.

verbTo read with an electronic device.

  • to scan a barcode
  • to scan a QR code
  • In the dispute with the RMT about scanning tickets, Jackson said it was the right thing to do to pay conductors something to scan tickets.2024 February 7, Philip Haigh, “Network News: TPE MD: consider impact of strikes on passengers”, in RAIL, number 1002, page 11

verbTo conform to a metrical structure.

  • You're right, sir, it doesn't scan very well in the English, but in the Gaelic it's sheer poetry.1998, Milton Acorn, Cedric Smith, edited by James Deahl, The Road to Charlottetown: A Play, UnMon Northland

nounAn instance of scanning.

  • The operators vacated the room during the scan.
  • Northern pays two pence per scan, Jackson noted, adding that ticket scanning helps to cut fraud and increase staff visibility.2024 February 7, Philip Haigh, “Network News: TPE MD: consider impact of strikes on passengers”, in RAIL, number 1002, page 11

nounThe result or output of a scanning process.

  • The doctors looked at the scans and made a diagnosis.

More sentences with scan

  • A helical scan with a pitch of zero is equivalent to constant z-axis scanning.From the entry pitch
  • I can't scan the whole document quickly because I only have a flatbed scanner.From the entry flatbed
  • Paul disdained pan and scan DVD releases, always holding out for the widescreen special editions.From the entry pan and scan
  • The MRI scan showed a brain lesion in the parietooccipital area.From the entry parietooccipital
  • The scan showed that the ewe was bearing twins.From the entry bear
  • Her eyes scanned up and down the page.From the entry up
  • Brain scans were graded on a five-point scale of atrophy.From the entry grade
  • In the discount bin by the door sat a pile of pan and scans, mostly comedies, that no one would touch.From the entry pan and scan
  • The scanned document was more legible after despeckling.From the entry despeckle
  • We FTP the whole dataset to the customer after we've scanned it to ensure that no restricted data is left inside it.From the entry FTP
  • Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, OCRs, and stores in its digital database.From the entry OCR
  • The poll worker scanned the lists of names in front of her, flipping through her list.2022, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, there are more things, Abacus (2023), page 395. From the entry poll worker
  • He paused, looking at me intently, his black-flecked eyes scanning my face in quick saccades.2019, Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me, Jonathan Cape, page 23. From the entry saccade
  • Why were they not the core memories and achievements my mind retrieved when scanning the past?2019, Ravi Kailas, Cathy Guo, Myth of the Entrepreneur: A Search for True Value, HarperCollins, →ISBN. From the entry core memory
  • Texts were scanned, converted via optical character recognition, and part of speech tagged using CLAWS 7.2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma rays: Promoting disciplinary literacy through…. From the entry optical character recognition
  • That doctor also noted the diplopia and sent her for a CT scan.2018 December 13, Lisa Sanders, M.D., “Why Was the Woman Having Trouble Seeing, if Her Eyes Were Fine?”, in The New York Times Magazine. From the entry diplopia
  • As we scan the Gaelian shore we see large side-necked turtles sunning themselves.2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin, published 2019, page 29. From the entry side-necked turtle
  • You scanned the party daddishly, as if everyone in the room bore some responsibility.2017, Stefan Merrill Block, Oliver Loving, →ISBN. From the entry daddishly
  • A Scanathon is an event the purpose of which is to preserve family photos by scanning them.2017, “The Scanathon connection”, in The Forest Park Review. From the entry scanathon
  • I love the way everyone tilts their heads as they scan the shelves.2015, Eric Idle, The Writer's Cut. From the entry tilter
  • On CT scan, a deformed right femoral head with postpinning defect, articular changes, and subluxation was visualized.2015 June 3, Nagmani Singh et al., “External Iliac Artery-Appendicular Fistula due to Antegrade Unusual Migration of K-Wire from Hip to…. From the entry postpinning
  • Clinical tumoural staging (cTNM) will be based on the data obtained from CT scan.2015 July 10, Mehdi Karoui et al., “Neoadjuvant FOLFOX 4 versus FOLFOX 4 with Cetuximab versus immediate surgery for high-risk stage II…. From the entry tumoural
  • All the patients were instructed to keep awake with the maximum intercuspation during the CBCT scanning.2015 August 8, “Three-Dimensional Evaluation of the Upper Airway Morphological Changes in Growing Patients with Skeletal Class III…. From the entry intercuspation
  • An MRI of the brain showed delayed myelinisation, no calcifications were seen on a CT scan.2015 September 7, Hermann Girschick et al., “Severe immune dysregulation with neurological impairment and minor bone changes in a child…. From the entry myelinisation
  • During the scanning process, subjects were asked to lie still with eyes open and not think initiatively.2015 September 12, “Graph Theoretical Analysis of BOLD Functional Connectivity during Human Sleep without EEG Monitoring”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry initiatively
  • We calculated change in attenuation of the obstruction between the two scans.2015 December 24, “Effect of X-Ray Attenuation of Arterial Obstructions on Intravenous Thrombolysis and Outcome after Ischemic Stroke”, in…. From the entry hyperattenuated

Meaning of scan

  1. verb To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.
  2. verb To inspect, analyse or go over, often to find something.
  3. verb To look about for; to look over quickly.

Full definition of scan

Questions about scan in a sentence

How do you use scan in a sentence?
Scan is used as a verb and noun. For example: “She scanned the passage carefully but could not find what she was looking for.”
What is a short sentence with scan?
“He scanned the horizon.”
What does scan mean?
Scan means to examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scan (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use scan in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/scan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.