Scrutineer comes from 'scrutiny' + '-eer'; 'scrutiny' is from Latin 'scrutinium' ('a search, inquiry'), from 'scrutari' ('to search, examine'), originally 'to sort rags', from 'scruta' ('trash, rags'). The historical chain includes Latin scrutinium and Latin scrutari. The quoted older senses, "scrutiny", "-eer", "scrutinium", "a search, inquiry", and "scrutari", supply the semantic anchors for scrutineer. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word scrutineer carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a person who examines or oversees the counting of votes". Related English forms include scrutiny, scrutinize, and scrutinizer. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.