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Scatter vs Scatteringly - What's the difference?

scatter | scatteringly |

As a verb scatter

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

As an adverb scatteringly is

in a scattering manner, suggesting scattering.

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

    scatteringly

    English

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • in a scattering manner, suggesting scattering.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1908, author=Alice MacGowan, title=Judith of the Cumberlands, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=She pushed cautiously down to the edge of the rocks where the bushes grew scatteringly , pretending to herself that she wanted a bit of wild geranium that flourished in a crevice far below the top. }}
  • * {{quote-book, year=1895, author=Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree), title=The Riddle Of The Rocks, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=The other men trooped along scatteringly , dodging under the low boughs of the stunted trees. }}
  • * {{quote-book, year=, author=Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), title=The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage='My father went straight to the hiding-place in full sight of everybody, and got out the fish-hooks and brought them and flung them scatteringly over my head, so that they fell in glittering confusion on the platform at my lover's knee. }}