someone who scans verse to determine the number and prosodic value of the syllables
"The senior student volunteered to act as a scanner for the poetry club's workshop, meticulously marking every iambic foot in Shakespeare's sonnets."
an electronic device that generates a digital representation of an image for data input to a computer
"I need to use my scanner to digitize these old photographs so I can upload them to the cloud."
a radar dish that rotates or oscillates in order to scan a broad area
"The air traffic controller watched as the rotating scanner swept over the airport perimeter, catching every aircraft approaching for landing."
a radio receiver that moves automatically across some selected range of frequencies looking for some signal or condition
"they used scanners to monitor police radio channels"
A device which scans documents in order to convert them to a digital medium.
"I used my scanner to digitize all the old receipts before throwing away the paper copies."
In plain English: A scanner is a device that turns pictures or text from paper into digital files on a computer.
"I used my phone's camera scanner to quickly digitize the receipt."
Usage: A scanner converts physical documents into digital files, distinguishing it from a printer which outputs images onto paper. Use this term specifically for input devices rather than general-purpose cameras or mobile phone scanning apps.
The word scanner is formed by adding the suffix "-er" to the verb scan, indicating a person or device that performs the action of scanning. This straightforward construction follows the common pattern for creating agent nouns in English.