Other forms: scoops, scooped, scooping
A scoop is a deep, spoon-shaped tool for lifting loose stuff — ice cream, flour, dog food — and also the amount it holds. The metal one buried in the bag of oats; two scoops in a cone, one strawberry and one chocolate.
As a verb, to scoop is to lift with that curved motion: scoop the seeds out of a pumpkin, scoop up a toddler under one arm, scoop the change off the counter. In a newsroom a scoop is the big story one reporter gets before any rival prints a word of it, and to scoop the competition is to beat them to it. That sense is countable — she got a scoop, three scoops in a year — and it belongs to real news, not to gossip you picked up at work. Informally, what's the scoop? means what's the latest. A scoop neck on a dress is the wide, curved one.
1noundeepA deep spoon-shaped tool for lifting loose or soft material.
“There's a plastic scoop inside the bag of flour.”
2nounamountThe amount such a tool holds.
“He asked for three scoops of vanilla.”
3nounscoopA news story one reporter publishes before every rival.
“The interview was a genuine scoop.”
synonyms: exclusive
4verbdigTo lift or dig something out with a curved movement.
“She scooped the seeds out of the melon with a spoon.”
5verbpublishTo publish a story before a rival can.
“A local paper scooped every national on the story.”
Also accepted in games: exclusive
Scoop came into Middle English from Dutch: scoep, a bucket for bailing water out of a boat, and schoppe, a shovel — the Dutch for spade is still schop. Behind both is an ancient root meaning to cut, scrape or hack, which also gave English shovel. The word has always been about moving loose material with something curved.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kep-
Middle Dutch
scoep
Middle English
scope
English, today
scoop
Built from
From Middle English scope, schoupe, a borrowing from Middle Dutch scoep, scuep, schope, schoepe (“bucket for bailing water”) and Middle Dutch schoppe, scoppe, schuppe "a scoop, shovel"; > Modern Dutch schop (“spade”), from Proto-Germanic skuppǭ, skuppijǭ, from Proto-Indo-European (s)kep- (“to cut, to scrape, to hack”). Cognate with Old Frisian skuppe (“shovel”), Middle Low German schōpe (“scoop, shovel”), German Low German Schüppe, Schüpp (“shovel”), German Schüppe, Schippe (“shovel, spade”). Related to English shovel, Japanese スコップ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in News & Communication, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word