Definition
nounAny cup-shaped or bowl-shaped tool, usually with a handle, used to lift and move loose or soft solid material.
nounThe amount or volume of loose or solid material held by a particular scoop.
Sentence Examples
What's the scoop on your new boyfriend?
If you walk your dog, scoop the poop.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
""We may get a scoop, if we are lucky. You'll be there in any case, so you'll just give us a pretty full report.""
— 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
"The problem is that the public, disobediently giggling over their social media accounts, reckon they’ve already got the scoop without needing to see the film."
— 2016 November 7, Peter Bradshaw, “Allied: what happens when a film gets eclipsed by gossip”, in The Guardian:
"Some had lain in the scoop of the rock."
— 1819, Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay:
"This brings the scoop into play as additional wetted surface and slows the board due to its fore-and-aft curvature"
— 1965, John M. Kelly, Surf and Sea, page 116:
"[T]he scoop or upward curvature in the front or nose section of a board is designed to keep the board from diving under the surface of the water when the surfer is catching a wave."
— 1977, Fred Hemmings, Surfing: Hawaii's Gift to the World of Sports, page 59: