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Word Nerd: "scanned"
Context and Language Videos
Act 3,
Scene 3
Lines 74b-78

An explanation of the word "scanned" in Act 3, Scene 3 in myShakespeare's Hamlet.

myShakespeare | Hamlet 3.3 Word Nerd: Scan

Hamlet

                                And so he goes to heaven,
And so I am revenged? That would be scanned.    
A villain kills my father and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Video Transcript: 

RALPH: It was only in the 20th century that to scan a document came to mean to glance through it quickly but not very thoroughly. Prior to that, it meant to examine a document in detail.

SARAH: Both then and now, it means to analyze a poem to determine it's type or assess its correctness by counting the number of syllables in each line.