scatter

«scatter» in Mova's school dictionary: to throw or drop things so they land in many different… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (scatter, scatters, scattered, scattering); noun (a scatter)

meaning for a pupil

1) To scatter is to throw or drop things so they land in many different places. tree →

2) To scatter is also for people or animals to run away quickly in different directions. tree →

3) A scatter is a small number of things spread out over an area. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and gardening, you scatter seeds on soil. In maths, a scatter graph (scatter plot) shows dots spread over a chart to see if two things are linked. In stories, birds or people «scatter» when something frightens them. Phrases: «scatter seeds», «scattered showers», «scatter graph», «scatter cushions».

examples

• The farmer scattered seeds across the field. tree →
• The pigeons scattered when the dog ran at them. tree →
• My toys were scattered all over the floor. tree →
• The children scattered when the rain started. tree →
• Scatter some cheese on top of the pizza. tree →
• The weather report said there would be scattered showers. tree →
• We made a scatter graph of height and shoe size. tree →
• There was a scatter of stars in the dark sky. tree →
• Fresh roses were scattered over her. tree →

note

Past form: scattered (double t stays, add -ed). «Scattered showers» in a weather report means rain in some places, not everywhere. A scatter graph in maths has points, not bars or lines.

In the corpora

• Scattering food in the grass makes gorillas walk and search, which is called foraging, and keeps them busy for longer.
• Calm, slow handling keeps sheep less stressed; stressed sheep scatter and can hurt themselves.
• Polar bear skin is black and its fur is made of see-through hollow hairs that look white because they scatter light.
• Veins look blue through the skin because of the way skin lets through and scatters light.
• Blood is always red: bright red with oxygen and darker red without; veins look blue because of the way skin scatters light.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «scatter» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.