scatter

verb

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

   “The crowd scattered in terror.”

   “Scatter and disperse the giddy Goths.”

2. (transitive)To distribute loosely as by sprinkling.

   “Her ashes were scattered at the top of a waterfall.”

   “Why should my muse enlarge on Libyan swains, / Their scattered cottages, and ample plains?”

3. (transitive)To deflect (radiation or particles).

   “Chasca's ring is unique. It appears to be, for lack of a better term, a massive piece of alien "installation art." The rings are made of small pieces of synthetic material, and are almost invisible from space. From the ground, they catch and scatter the light of Matano in picturesque ways. It is not known who created the ring or when.”

4. (intransitive)To occur or fall at widely spaced intervals.
5. (transitive)To frustrate, disappoint, and overthrow.

   “to scatter hopes or plans”

6. (transitive)To be dispersed upon.

   “Desiccated stalks scattered the fields.”

   “[…] its beauty is obscured by the environmental waste and loose trash that scatter the countryside.”

7. (transitive)Of a pitcher: to keep down the number of hits or walks.
8. (US, slang)To leave.

   “When the police showed up, I scattered.”

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The act of scattering or dispersing.
2. (countable, uncountable)A collection of dispersed objects.

   “The Los Angeles Basin evolved as a mobility surface principally through the combination of an initial system of electric railways connecting a scatter of agricultural settlement settlements.”

   “A broad scatter of kurgan graves in the steppes contained imported Tripolye C2 pots (among other imported pot types) and a few, like Serezlievka, also contained Tripolye-like schematic rod-headed figurines.”

   “The plot of all our sea-level index points shows a scatter of data points that do not overlap […]”