To clean or scrub thoroughly, covering a surface completely with cleaning action.
From 'be-' + 'scour' (from Old Norse 'skúra,' meaning to scrub or clean). The prefix intensifies the verb to mean cleaning thoroughly and completely.
In old English households, 'bescour' meant really going at a surface with serious elbow grease—not just a quick wipe-down but a thorough, exhausting cleaning from corner to corner. It's the ancestor of our modern phrase 'clean from top to bottom.'
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