go on the scout

English

Etymology

From scout, meaning an act of scouting or reconnoitering.

Verb

go on the scout (third-person singular simple present goes on the scout, present participle going on the scout, simple past went on the scout, past participle been on the scout)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see go,‎ scout.; to go on a scouting mission.
   • 1908, John M. Elkins, Life on the Texas Frontier, page 98:

     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.

   • 2004, Jake Logan, Slocum and the Teton Temptress:

     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.

   • 2013, Gary Dallmann, White Fox: Dakota Warrior, page 80:

     Bloody Feet will choose two warriors and go on the scout to the Iowa nation.

   • 2005, Louis L'Amour, Under the Sweetwater Rim: A Novel:

     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.”

2. (idomatic) To go into hiding.
   • 1893, Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court:

     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 ?

   • 2010, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned, page 172:

     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.

   • 2012, Loren D. Estleman, Whiskey River:

     Work like this here's the reason I went on the scout in the first place.