Etymologically
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scoop

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English scope,[2][3] borrowed from Middle Dutch schōpe, also schoepe, a vessel for bailing out water or the bucket of a waterwheel,[4][3][5] or the Middle Low German schōpe of the same meaning.[4][5][6] Both go back to Proto-West Germanic *skōpō,[7][8] from Proto-Germanic *skōp-, a variant of the base *skap- that also gave Old Saxon sceppian (“to draw water”), Dutch scheppen and German schöpfen, and is related to shape.[4][8][7] Barnhart traces the base to Proto-Indo-European *skab- (“to hew out”),[3] and Etymonline to *(s)kep- (“to cut, scrape, hack”).[9] The OED and Weekley see a second source in the shovel sense: schoppe, modern schop, and schuppe (“shovel”), which are related to shove and shovel;[4][10][11] the Dutch and German words for the bailing vessel and the shovel were partly confused.[4] The French écope, recorded as Old French escope about 1413, has the senses of both, and the OED allows that the word may have come into English through French;[4] Etymonline and the MED also name the northern form escoupe.[9][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A ladle or other utensil for bailing out or skimming liquids: Barnhart dates scope in this sense to 1324–25,[3] and the OED's first quotation is from about 1330, in Robert Mannyng's Chronicle.[4] The MED finds the word earlier still in Latin shipbuilding accounts of 1295.[2]

Semantic evolution

From the ladle the word passed to a kind of shovel for loose materials (1487), to the bucket of a waterwheel or dredge (1591), and to small kitchen utensils such as the apple scoop and cheese scoop (1747); a surgeon's scoop is recorded from 1739.[4][9] Johnson (1755) defined it first as a large ladle with a long handle for throwing out liquor.[12] The verb, to bail out water, is as old as the noun, appearing in Mannyng's Chronicle;[4][3] it came to mean removing soft material with a concave tool in the 1620s and hollowing something out from 1708.[4][9] In American slang of about 1850 to scoop was to take in large quantities or to appropriate something ahead of competitors,[4][3][9] which led to the newspaper sense: a scoop, news published before a rival paper has it, is recorded from 1874,[3][9][7] and the verb, to beat a rival paper to a story, from 1884.[4][9] A scoop was also a lucky haul from 1893, in Kipling,[4][9] and Green's Dictionary of Slang records the verb for "to beat, defeat" in Mark Twain (1872).[13] In Scottish, Irish and English dialects scoop was a ladle, a corn-shovel, a coal scuttle or a baler.[14]

Timeline

  • 1324–25 – scope, a ladle for removing liquid.[3]
  • c. 1330 – a utensil for bailing out or ladling liquids; the verb, to bail out water.[4]
  • 1487 – a kind of shovel.[4][3]
  • 1622 – to remove soft material with a concave tool.[4]
  • 1708 – to hollow out.[4]
  • 1745 – the act of scooping.[4]
  • 1850 – US slang, to appropriate something ahead of competitors.[4][3]
  • 1874 – a piece of news published before a rival newspaper.[3][9]
  • 1884 – to beat a rival newspaper to a story.[4]
  • 1893 – a lucky haul.[4]
  • 1911 – in music, a portamento.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A utensil like a small shovel with deep sides and a short handle, for taking up flour, grain, sugar and the like.[15][16]
  2. A ladle with a long handle for dipping out liquids.[15][16]
  3. A utensil with a round bowl for serving ice cream or mashed potato, or the amount it holds: two scoops of vanilla.[15][16]
  4. Something that works like a scoop, such as the bucket of a dredge.[15][4]
  5. A spoon-shaped surgical instrument for scraping or removing matter from the body.[15][4]
  6. A hollow or cavity.[15][4]
  7. A news story published by one paper before all the others; an exclusive.[15][4]
  8. (slang) A large, quick gain, as of money.[15][4]

Verb

  1. To take up or out with a scoop, or as if with one: She scooped the seeds out of the pumpkin.[15][16]
  2. To hollow out with or as if with a scoop.[15][4]
  3. To beat rival newspapers to a news item.[15][4]
  4. To win a prize or a large sum of money.[15]
  5. (sport) To hit the ball on its underside so that it rises.[15]

Word family

  • scooper
  • scoopful
  • scoopable
  • scoop neck

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  13. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  14. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  16. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster