Scattered

How to spell scattered

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scattered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scattered mean?

1. adjectiveSpread out over a wide area in an irregular or thinly distributed way.
2. verbThrew or distributed things loosely in many different directions.

Scattered in a sentence

• adjective

  The forecast warned of scattered showers across the region.

• verb

  The wind scattered the loose papers across the office floor.

• adjective

  A few scattered houses dotted the empty hillside.

• verb

  She scattered the seeds evenly over the freshly dug bed.

Where does scattered come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb scatter appears in Middle English as scateren, first recorded around the 1200s, with the sense of throwing or strewing things loosely in many directions. It is most likely a northern dialect variant of the word that also gave us shatter, both probably echoing a Germanic root suggesting a sudden breaking apart or dispersal. The shared imagery is of something flying outward into separate pieces, which is exactly the meaning that survives in modern English. The form scattered simply adds the regular -ed ending, used both for the past tense of the verb and as an adjective describing things spread thinly over an area. Because the word doubles the t before -ered, the single-t spellings that writers sometimes reach for are wrong; remember it is built straight on scatter.

How the word is built

• scatter (to throw loosely about)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)