Search the Dictionary

The act or process of scattering or dispersing, or the state of being scattered or separated; as, the Jews in their dispersion retained their rites and ceremonies; a great dispersion of the human family took place at the building of Babel. The days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished. Jer. xxv. 3…

Occurring in small portions scattered through some other substance.

Capable of being scattered or dissipated. [R.] The heat of those plants is very dissipable. Bacon.

Squandered; scattered. "Dissipated wealth." Johnson.

s, a name given, in the south of England, to weatherworn, rough pillars of gray sandstone scattered over the chalk downs, but in other countries generally in the form of circles, or in detached pillars.

equal and friendly terms; frequent and familiar intercourse. In a great town, friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship which is in less neighborhods. Bacon. Men are made for society and mutual fellowship. Calamy.

light of arrows. Swift. Swift flights of angels ministrant. Milton. Like a flight of fowl Scattered winds and tempestuous gusts. Shak.

Anything that is scattered abroad in great numbers as a theatrical programme, an advertising leaf, etc.

i. 26. Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not. Matt. vi. 26. Like a flight of fowl Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts. Shak.

To gather after a reaper; to collect in scattered or fragmentary parcels, as the grain left by a reaper, or grapes left after the gathering. To glean the broken ears after the man That the main harvest reaps. Shak.

To give feeble or scattered rays of light; to shine faintly; to show a faint, unsteady light; as, the glimmering dawn; a glimmering lamp. The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day. Shak.

tribes, coming originally from India, entered Europe in 14th or 15th centry, and are now scattered over Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Spain, England, etc., living by theft, fortune telling, horsejockeying, tinkering, etc. Cf. Bohemian, Romany. Like a right gypsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of lo…

To diversify or adorn with things set or scattered at intervals; to place something at intervals in or among; as, to intersperse a book with pictures. Which space is interspersed with small islands and rock. Cook.

great size, weighing from thirty to forty pounds, and through its soft fibrous matter are scattered the seeds, which are roasted and eaten. The wood is of a yellow color, fine grain, and rather heavy, and is much used in cabinetwork. It is also used for dyeing a brilliant yellow. [Written also jak.]…

Straw, hay, etc., scattered on a floor, as bedding for animals to rest on; also, a covering of straw for plants. To crouch in litter of your stable planks. Shak. Take off the litter from your kernel beds. Evelyn.

To be spread or scattered over.

Fig.: Anything regarded as a patch; a small piece of ground; a tract; a plot; as, scattered patches of trees or growing corn. Employed about this patch of ground. Bunyan.

rder Filices or ferns. The fructifications are in uncovered roundish points, called sori, scattered over the inferior surface of the frond or leaf. There are numerous species.

To come into orderly arrangement; to renew order, or united effort, as troops scattered or put to flight; to assemble; to unite. The Grecians rally, and their powers unite. Dryden. Innumerable parts of matter chanced just then to rally together, and to form themselves into this new world. Tillotson.…

Thinly scattered; dispersed. Those rare and solitary, three in flocks. Milton.