scanning line

noun

1. (in a cathode-ray or television tube) a single horizontal trace made by the electron beam in one traversal of the fluorescent screen. Compare frame ( def 8 ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of scanning line¹

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

The filling-in-the-circles line is short; it’s the scanning line that goes on forever.

From The New Yorker

As these radiant forms glide along the avenues, the men who meet them coolly bend and look full into their faces, scanning line and feature with the critical air of connoisseurs.

From Project Gutenberg

In truth, his sense of prosaic excellence affected his verse rather than his prose, which is not only fervid, richly figured, poetic, as we say, but vitiated, all unconsciously, by many a scanning line.

From Project Gutenberg