scour
n.n. a very thorough search for something. You use this when you are looking for a specific person or thing with great effort.
n. a thorough search or investigation, often implying a systematic or exhaustive effort to find something.
The police conducted a thorough scour of the neighborhood.
After the storm, the coast guard launched a massive scour of the shoreline to find any missing equipment.
The historian's life's work was a meticulous scour of the archives, uncovering documents that had been hidden for centuries and rewriting the narrative of the era.
From Middle English scǒuren (“to polish, scour; to clean; to beat, whip”), from Middle Dutch scuren, schuren (“to clean; to polish”) or Middle Low German schǖren, of uncertain origin but probably from Old French escurer, from Medieval Latin scūrō, escūrō, excūrō (“to clean off”), from ex- (“thoroughly”) + cūrō (“to arrange, see to, take care of”), from cūra (“care, concern”) (from Proto-Indo-European *kʷeys- (“to heed”)) + -ō. The word is cognate with Danish skure, Middle High German schüren, schiuren (modern German scheuern (“to scour, scrub; to chafe”)), Norwegian skura (“to scrub”), Swedish skura, Catalan escurar.
From Middle English scǒuren, scure, skoure (“to move quickly; to travel around in search of enemies”), from scǒur (“attack, conflict; pang of emotional suffering”), from Old Norse skýra (“to rush in”) and skúr (“a shower; a shower of missiles”), perhaps influenced by the verb scǒuren: see etymology 1.