scansion

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin scānsiō (“a scanning”), in classical Latin "act of climbing",^[2][3][4][5] a noun of action from the past-participle stem of scandō (“to climb”),^[3][6][7] from Proto-Indo-European *skand- (“to spring, leap, climb”).^[3][4] The OED compares French scansion and Italian scansione.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of climbing up: 1653, in Z. Coke's Art of Logick, a rare use that did not last.^[8][7] Barnhart dates this use to 1654 and Etymonline to the 1650s.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The prosodic sense is the one that survives, recorded from 1671 in E. Phillips's New World of Words.^[8][2][6] It follows the Late Latin use of scandō for scanning verse;^[8][3] Etymonline calls the image behind that use uncertain, and in its entry for scan reports the suggestion that it refers to tapping the feet in time or to the rise and fall of verse.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the act or practice of scanning a verse".^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged now extends it to the analysis of any rhythmic structure.^[6]

Timeline

• 1653 – the action of climbing up (obsolete, recorded only in the mid 17th century).^[8][7]
• 1671 – the action or art of dividing verse into metrical feet; also, an example of this.^[8][2][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The analysis of verse into its metre and feet.^[10][6][8]
2. The division of any rhythmic series into its units.^[6]
3. The result of such an analysis; a particular description of a line's metre: Her scansion of the sonnet's opening line was disputed.^[6][8]

Related words

• scan
• ascend
• descend
• scandal
• scale

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins