Clutter vs Scatter - What's the difference?

As verbs the difference between clutter and scatter

is that clutter is to fill something with clutter while scatter is to (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse.

As a noun clutter

is a confused disordered jumble of things.

clutter

English

Noun

(-)

A confused disordered jumble of things.

* L'Estrange

He saw what a clutter there was with huge, overgrown pots, pans, and spits.

*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner

, title= 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.}}

(obsolete) Clatter; confused noise.

(Jonathan Swift)

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

Organizing ghost stories is like herding a clutter of cats: the phenomenon resists organization and classification.

Derived terms

* surface clutter * volume clutter

Verb

(en verb)

To fill something with .

*{{quote-magazine, title=No hiding place

, date=2013-05-25, volume=407, issue=8837, page=74, magazine=(The Economist) 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.}}

(obsolete) To clot or coagulate, like blood.

(Holland)

To make a confused noise; to bustle.

* Tennyson

It [the goose] cluttered here, it chuckled there.

(Webster 1913)

scatter

English

Verb

(en verb)

(ergative) To (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse.

the police scattered the crowds

the crowd scattered

* Shakespeare

Scatter and disperse the giddy Goths.

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?

(physics) To deflect (radiation or particles).

To occur or fall at widely spaced intervals.

To frustrate, disappoint, and overthrow.

to scatter hopes or plans

Derived terms

* scatterbrain * scatterplot * scattershot