Other forms: scrutinised, scrutinising, scrutinises
To scrutinise something is to look at it hard and slowly, the way you check a banknote you do not trust - holding it up, turning it over, hunting for the thing that is wrong.
The word carries suspicion, or at least real doubt. You scrutinise a contract before signing it, a face for a flicker of a lie, a column of figures for the mistake you know is in there. Committees scrutinise proposals, and in that setting it means an official check rather than a private one. The noun scrutiny gets used more than the verb: plans come under scrutiny, a story does not stand up to scrutiny. British English writes scrutinise, American English scrutinize, and both are correct where they belong. Do not use it for a quick look - scrutinising takes time, and the person doing it expects to find something.
1verbscrutiniseTo examine something closely and carefully, looking for details or faults.~17%
“She scrutinised the receipt line by line before she paid.”
2verbofficiallyTo examine officially, to check that something is correct or fair.~83%
“A committee scrutinises every new bill before the vote.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: scrutinize
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- — to cut
Latin
scrūta — rubbish, broken trash
Vulgar Latin
scrūtor — to search or examine thoroughly
Medieval Latin
scrūtinium — a search, an inquiry
Middle English
scrutiny
English
scrutiny
English, today
scrutinise
From scrutiny + -ise. scrutiny comes from Middle English scrutiny, from Medieval Latin scrūtinium (“a search, an inquiry”), from Vulgar Latin scrūtor (“to search or examine thoroughly”), from Latin scrūta (“rubbish, broken trash”), from an extension of Proto-Indo-European (s)ker- (“to cut”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA