scatter

English

Etymology

From Middle English scateren, skateren, (also schateren, see shatter), from Old English *sceaterian, probably from a dialect of Old Norse. Possibly related to Proto-Indo-European *skēi-t- (“cut, split apart, shattered”), passive participle of *skey- (“to cut, split, shatter”). Compare Middle Dutch scheteren (“to scatter”), Low German schateren, Dutch schateren (“to burst out laughing”); and is apparently remotely akin to Ancient Greek σκεδάννυμι (skedánnumi, “scatter, disperse”).[1]

Pronunciation

Verb

scatter (third-person singular simple present scatters, present participle scattering, simple past and past participle scattered)

  1. (ergative) To (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse.
    The crowd scattered in terror.
    • Shakespeare
      Scatter and disperse the giddy Goths.
  2. (transitive) To distribute loosely as by sprinkling.
    Her ashes were scattered at the top of a waterfall.
    • Dryden
      Why should my muse enlarge on Libyan swains, / Their scattered cottages, and ample plains?
  3. (transitive, physics) To deflect (radiation or particles).
  4. (intransitive) To occur or fall at widely spaced intervals.
  5. (transitive) To frustrate, disappoint, and overthrow.
    to scatter hopes or plans
  6. (transitive) To be dispersed upon.
    Desiccated stalks scattered the fields.
    • 2016, J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, page 21:
      […] its beauty is obscured by the environmental waste and loose trash that scatter the countryside.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Noun

scatter (countable and uncountable, plural scatters)

  1. The act of scattering or dispersing.
  2. A collection of dispersed objects.
    • 2006, Theano S. Terkenli, Anne-Marie d'Hauteserre, Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space, Springer Science & Business Media →ISBN, page 84
      The Los Angeles Basin evolved as a mobility surface principally through the combination of an initial system of electric railways connecting a scatter of agricultural settlement settlements.
    • 2015, Ian Shennan, Antony J. Long, Benjamin P. Horton, Handbook of Sea-Level Research, John Wiley & Sons →ISBN, page 19
      The plot of all our sea-level index points shows a scatter of data points that do not overlap […]

Further reading

  • scatter at OneLook Dictionary Search
  • scatter in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
  • scatter in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Anagrams

  1. ↑ Skeat
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