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 *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
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈskætə/
- (General American) enPR: skătʹər, IPA(key): /ˈskætɚ/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ætə(ɹ)
- Hyphenation: scat‧ter
Verb
scatter (third-person singular simple present scatters, present participle scattering, simple past and past participle scattered)
- (ergative) To (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse.
- The crowd scattered in terror.
- Shakespeare
- Scatter and disperse the giddy Goths.
- (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?
- (transitive, physics) To deflect (radiation or particles).
- (intransitive) To occur or fall at widely spaced intervals.
- (transitive) To frustrate, disappoint, and overthrow.
- to scatter hopes or plans
- (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.
Synonyms
- (disperse): See also Thesaurus:disperse
Derived terms
Translations
to scatter — see disperse
to cause to separate
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to disperse
to distribute loosely
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physics: to deflect
- 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.
Translations to be checked
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Noun
scatter (countable and uncountable, plural scatters)
- The act of scattering or dispersing.
- 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 9781402040955, 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 9781118452578, page 19
- The plot of all our sea-level index points shows a scatter of data points that do not overlap […]
- 2006, Theano S. Terkenli, Anne-Marie d'Hauteserre, Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space, Springer Science & Business Media ISBN 9781402040955, page 84
Further reading
- scatter at OneLook Dictionary Search
- scatter in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
- scatter in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
References
- Skeat
Anagrams
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