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Swarm vs Clutter - What's the difference?

swarm | clutter | Related terms |

Swarm is a related term of clutter.


As nouns the difference between swarm and clutter

is that swarm is a large number of insects, especially when in motion or (for bees) migrating to a new colony while clutter is a confused disordered jumble of things.

As verbs the difference between swarm and clutter

is that swarm is (lb) to move as a swarm while clutter is to fill something with.

swarm

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A large number of insects, especially when in motion or (for bees) migrating to a new colony.
  • * Milton
  • a deadly swarm of hornets
  • A mass of people, animals or things in motion or turmoil.
  • a swarm of meteorites
  • * Addison
  • those prodigious swarms that had settled themselves in every part of it [Italy]
  • (label) A group of nodes sharing the same torrent in a BitTorrent network.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • (lb) To move as a swarm .
  • *
  • *:There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors.
  • (lb) To teem, or be overrun with insects, people, etc.
  • *(Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
  • *:Every place swarms with soldiers.
  • (lb) To fill a place as a swarm .
  • (lb) To overwhelm as by an opposing army.
  • To climb by gripping with arms and legs alternately.
  • * (1748–1828)
  • *:At the top was placed a piece of money, as a prize for those who could swarm up and seize it.
  • *1919 , , (The Moon and Sixpence) ,
  • *:She called out, and a boy came running along. He swarmed up a tree, and presently threw down a ripe nut. Ata pierced a hole in it, and the doctor took a long, refreshing draught.
  • To breed multitudes.
  • *(John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • *:Not so thick swarmed once the soil / Bedropped with blood of Gorgon.
  • See also

    *

    Anagrams

    * (l) English collective nouns

    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)