Scanner comes from scan + -er; scan derives from Latin scandere ('to climb', and in late use 'to scan verse by marking metrical feet'). The historical chain includes Latin scandere. Older glosses in the chain include "to climb" and "to scan verse by marking metrical feet", which help explain the semantic range of the modern word. Morphologically, scanner is best read as compound, suffixal formation, and borrowing, yielding an English noun shaped by both form history and later usage. In current English it functions as a noun, with the sense "a device that examines or digitizes images, codes, or signals". related forms include scan. The result is an English noun whose etymology preserves the older forms while supporting the word's specialized modern meaning.