Dictionary

go on the scout en · VERB

Etymology

From scout, meaning an act of scouting or reconnoitering.

Meanings

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see go, scout.; to go on a scouting mission.
   • The men liked him, respected his knowledge, and his lack of desire to impress. “Chancel,” Major Devereaux said, “I want you to go on the scout.” 2005, Louis L'Amour, Under the Sweetwater Rim: A Novel:
   • Bloody Feet will choose two warriors and go on the scout to the Iowa nation. 2013, Gary Dallmann, White Fox: Dakota Warrior, page 80:
   • Slocum went on the scout early the next morning. He saddled up Oro in the freezing cold and rode north toward the wild place that had been designated a national park in 1875, Yellowstone. 2004, Jake Logan, Slocum and the Teton Temptress:
   • Foster wanted Hateher to go on another scout and he told the Lieutenant that if he would pay back his money that he had paid out for the State, so he could get some blankets—as the weather was getting bad—that he would go on the scout. 1908, John M. Elkins, Life on the Texas Frontier, page 98:
2. (idiomatic) To go into hiding.
   • Killed a man and hauled him off a mile and a half and threw him over at that place, and went on the scout, and never told anybody about it ? 1893, Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court:
   • Work like this here's the reason I went on the scout in the first place. 2012, Loren D. Estleman, Whiskey River:
   • The word from Tuxie Miller, who had seen Zeke after he returned home with Becca, was that Zeke was so apprehensive about the arrival of the white law that he planned to go on the scout the very next day. 2010, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned, page 172:

Forms