Other forms: scouts; scouting; scouted
When you explore or investigate an area, you scout. If your cat is missing, you might send your friends out to scout around the neighborhood.
When you scout, you're searching for information; the word comes from the Old French escouter, "to listen for," and its Latin source, auscultare, "to listen attentively." And when you're searching under porches and in trees for your missing cat — also listening for his meows — you're acting as a scout, someone tasked with looking out for or finding something.