Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cause to separate and go in different directions.
  • intransitive verb To distribute loosely; strew.
  • intransitive verb To be strewn over or across.
  • intransitive verb To diffuse or deflect (radiation or particles).
  • intransitive verb Baseball To allow (hits or walks) in small numbers over several innings. Used of a pitcher.
  • intransitive verb To separate and go in different directions; disperse.
  • noun The act of scattering or the condition of being scattered.
  • noun Something scattered.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In optics, to reflect diffusely or irregularly, as from a rough surface.
  • To throw loosely about; strew; sprinkle.
  • To besprinkle or strew as with something thrown here and there.
  • To separate and drive off in disorder and in all directions; rout; put to disorderly retreat or flight; disperse; dissipate: as, to scatter an enemy's forces; to scatter a mob.
  • Hence To throw into confusion; overthrow; dispel; put to flight: as, to scatter hopes, fears, plans, etc.
  • To let fall as by accident or at random; drop.
  • Synonyms To diffuse, spread, distribute.
  • 3 and Disperse, Dispel, etc. See dissipate.
  • To separate and disperse; proceed in different directions; hence, to go hither and thither at random.
  • Specifically, to throw shot too loosely or without concentration of the charge: said of a gun.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To be dispersed or dissipated; to disperse or separate.
  • transitive verb To strew about; to sprinkle around; to throw down loosely; to deposit or place here and there, esp. in an open or sparse order.
  • transitive verb To cause to separate in different directions; to reduce from a close or compact to a loose or broken order; to dissipate; to disperse.
  • transitive verb Hence, to frustrate, disappoint, and overthrow.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb ergative To (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse.
  • verb transitive To distribute loosely as by sprinkling.
  • verb transitive (physics) To deflect (radiation or particles).
  • verb intransitive To occur or fall at widely spaced intervals.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb to cause to separate and go in different directions
  • verb distribute loosely
  • noun the act of scattering
  • verb cause to separate
  • noun a haphazard distribution in all directions
  • verb strew or distribute over an area
  • verb move away from each other
  • verb sow by scattering

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English scateren, perhaps from northern dialectal alteration of Old English *sceaterian.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English scateren, from Old English sceaterian, probably from a dialect of Old Norse. Compare Low German schateren, Dutch schateren and Norwegian skratte ('to burst out laughing').

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Examples

  • Once a scatter is attached, a right side of a shade should demeanour similar to this.

    Archive 2009-12-01 admin 2009

  • Once a scatter is attached, a right side of a shade should demeanour similar to this.

    Screwdriver Cordless YouTube Bosch GSR 10.8 V-LI Cordless ... admin 2009

  • "With our approach we hit fully linear parallelism because we take all the source systems and we essentially do what we call scatter the data," explained Ben Wether, director of product management at Greenplum.

    eWeek - RSS Feeds 2009

  • Turn a ends of a scatter up as good as in to a join stipend creation certain a complete scatter is inside of a accomplished width of a shade, or 5/8 from a edge.

    Archive 2009-12-01 admin 2009

  • Turn a ends of a scatter up as good as in to a join stipend creation certain a complete scatter is inside of a accomplished width of a shade, or 5/8 from a edge.

    Screwdriver Cordless YouTube Bosch GSR 10.8 V-LI Cordless ... admin 2009

  • "The (team's) paper falls short of establishing that this thin scatter of rubbish was left by chimpanzees," White wrote in an e-mail.

    Archive 2007-02-01 2007

  • The analyst, who called the growth in P2P “explosive,” observed that the RIAA strategy was like chasing cockroaches that scatter from the light, stressing that for each P2P network targeted, there are ample more to step up and bring on more users.

    RIAA p2p marketing campaign 2005

  • The analyst, who called the growth in P2P “explosive,” observed that the RIAA strategy was like chasing cockroaches that scatter from the light, stressing that for each P2P network targeted, there are ample more to step up and bring on more users.

    The RIAA: managing Jell-O 2005

  • "Scatter," said he in English -- "scatter without adieus, and all to the fore by morning search back to the Brig of Urchy, comrades there till the middle of the day, then the devil take the hindmost."

    John Splendid The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn Neil Munro

  • Buying spots when the season is under way, rather than ahead of time in the upfront market, is called the scatter market.

    NYT > Home Page By STUART ELLIOTT 2011

Comments

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  • Difficult to make sense of this, and the blog seemingly no longer exists:

    “Turn a ends of a scatter up as good as in to a join stipend creation certain a complete scatter is inside of a accomplished width of a shade, or 5/8 from a edge.”

    May 10, 2012