clutter

From Middle English cloteren (“to form clots; coagulate; heap on”), from clot (“clot”), equivalent to clot +‎ -er (frequentative suffix). Compare Welsh cludair (“heap, pile”), cludeirio (“to heap”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈklʌtə(ɹ)/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈklʌtɚ/, [ˈklʌɾɚ]
• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)

clutter (countable and uncountable, plural clutters)

1. (uncountable) A confused disordered jumble of things.
   • 1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC:

     He saw what a Clutter there was with Huge, Over-grown Pots, Pans, and Spits.

   • 2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7:

     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.

2. (uncountable) Background echoes, from clouds etc., on a radar or sonar screen.
3. (countable) Alternative form of clowder (“collective noun for 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.

4. (obsolete) Clatter; confused noise.
   • October 14 1718, John Arbuthnot, letter to Jonathan Swift

     I hardly heard a word of news or politicks, except a little clutter about sending some impertinent presidents du parliament to prison

   • 1835, William Cobbett, John Morgan Cobbett, James Paul Cobbett, Selections from Cobbett's political works, volume 1, page 33:

     It was then you might have heard a clutter: pots, pans and pitchers, mugs, jugs and jordens, all put themselves in motion at once […]

5. (mathematics) A Sperner system.

• e-clutter
• surface clutter
• volume clutter

clutter (third-person singular simple present clutters, present participle cluttering, simple past and past participle cluttered)

1. To fill something with clutter.
   • 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:

     That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.

2. (obsolete, intransitive) To clot or coagulate, like blood.
   • 1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XII.]”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, published 1635, →OCLC:

     It battereth and cluttereth into knots and balls

3. To make a confused noise; to bustle.
   • 1832, Alfred Tennyson, “The Goose”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, stanza VII, page 231:

     It [the goose] clutter'd here, it chuckled there; / It stirr'd the old wife's mettle: / She shifted in her elbow-chair, / And hurl'd the pan and kettle.

4. To utter words hurriedly, especially (but not exclusively) as a speech disorder (compare cluttering).

• clutter up

• “clutter”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.