Clutter vs Havoc - What's the difference?
clutter | havoc |
A confused disordered jumble of things.
* L'Estrange
*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
, title= (obsolete) Clatter; confused noise.
Background echos, from clouds etc., on a radar or sonar screen.
(countable) A group of cats;
* 2008 , John Robert Colombo, The Big Book of Canadian Ghost Stories , Introduction
To fill something with .
*{{quote-magazine, title=No hiding place
, date=2013-05-25, volume=407, issue=8837, page=74, magazine=(The Economist)
(obsolete) To clot or coagulate, like blood.
To make a confused noise; to bustle.
* Tennyson
widespread devastation, destruction
* Bible, Acts viii. 3
* Addison
:* {{quote-book
, year=1918
, year_published=2008
, edition=HTML
, editor=
, author=Edgar Rice Burroughs
, title=The People that Time Forgot
, chapter=
mayhem
To pillage.
* 1599 , , Henry V , Act I, Scene II:
To cause .
A cry in war as the signal for indiscriminate slaughter.
* Toone
* Shakespeare
As nouns the difference between clutter and havoc
is that clutter is a confused disordered jumble of things while havoc is widespread devastation, destruction.As verbs the difference between clutter and havoc
is that clutter is to fill something with while havoc is to pillage.As an interjection havoc is
a cry in war as the signal for indiscriminate slaughter.clutter
English
Noun
(-)- He saw what a clutter there was with huge, overgrown pots, pans, and spits.
William E. Conner
An Acoustic Arms Race, volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Nonetheless, some insect prey take advantage of clutter' by hiding in it. Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the ' clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.}}
- (Jonathan Swift)
- Organizing ghost stories is like herding a clutter of cats: the phenomenon resists organization and classification.
Derived terms
* surface clutter * volume clutterVerb
(en verb)citation, passage=In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.}}
- (Holland)
- It [the goose] cluttered here, it chuckled there.
havoc
English
Alternative forms
* havock (e.g. in Milton)Noun
(en-noun)- As for Saul, he made havoc of the church.
- Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make / Among your works!
citation, genre= , publisher=The Gutenberg Project , isbn= , page= , passage=But when I had come to that part of the city which I judged to have contained the relics I sought I found havoc that had been wrought there even greater than elsewhere. }}
Usage notes
The noun havoc is most often used in the set phrase wreak havoc.Old Hungarian Goulash?, The Grammarphobia Blog, October 31, 2008
Derived terms
* play havoc, raise havoc, wreak havoc, cry havoc, break havocVerb
- To tear and havoc more than she can eat.
Usage notes
As with other verbs ending in vowel + -c, The gerund-participle is sometimes spelled havocing, and the preterite and past participle is sometimes spelled havoced; for citations using these spellings, see their respective entries. However, the spellings havocking and havocked are far more common. Compare panic, picnic.References
Interjection
(en interjection)- Do not cry havoc , where you should but hunt / With modest warrant.
- Cry "havoc", and let slip the dogs of war!