Cleaned or polished something hard by rubbing it vigorously, or searched a place thoroughly.
From Old Norse 'skúra' meaning to shower or scrub. The word entered English around the 1300s meaning to clean by hard rubbing, and later developed the meaning 'to search thoroughly.'
When glaciers 'scour' the earth during ice ages, they carve massive valleys and lakes—the same word describes both cleaning a pot and one of nature's most powerful geological forces!
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