Scattering

How to spell scattering

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce scattering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scattering mean?

1. nounA small number of things spread thinly across an area.
2. verbThe action of throwing or spreading things about in various directions.
3. nounThe deflection of waves or particles in many directions after striking something.

Scattering in a sentence

• noun

  Only a scattering of customers came in during the storm.

• verb

  The gardener was scattering seeds across the freshly dug bed.

• noun

  The blue sky is explained by the scattering of sunlight by air molecules.

• noun

  A scattering of crumbs covered the kitchen counter.

• verb

  The wind kept scattering the leaves we had just raked.

• noun

  Physicists measured the scattering of electrons off the metal surface.

Where does scattering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb scatter first appears in Middle English as scateren in the 1200s, meaning to throw or strew loosely about. It is widely thought to be a northern variant of shatter, the two words sharing the sense of breaking or flinging things apart into many directions, and both are believed to descend from an unrecorded Germanic root imitating sudden dispersal. The form with sc- rather than sh- points to influence from the Old Norse-speaking north of England, where hard consonant clusters were common. By adding the suffix -ing, English formed both a present participle (the falling snow was scattering) and a noun naming either the act of dispersing or, more concretely, a thin spread of things over an area. Because the verb doubles its t before -ing, the spelling carries two t's, which is the single point worth remembering; there is no exotic origin to trip over, just the doubled consonant.

How the word is built

• scatter (to throw loosely about, disperse)
• -ing (noun/participle suffix)