scutter

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• IPA^(key): /ˈskʌtə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)

scutter (countable and uncountable, plural scutters)

1. Thin excrement.
   • 2001, Ciaran O'Driscoll, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, page 74:

     Cows were always scuttering: they left mounds and trails of scutter all over the place.

2. A hasty run.

scutter (third-person singular simple present scutters, present participle scuttering, simple past and past participle scuttered)

1. To void thin excrement.
   • 1565, Alois Brandl, editor, King Daryus:

     Nay then I wil geue you no bread and butter.
     Here, take some, it will make thee to scutter.

   • 2001, Ciaran O'Driscoll, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, page 74:

     Cows were always scuttering: they left mounds and trails of scutter all over the place.

2. (chiefly of small animals) To run with a light pattering noise; to skitter.

   We saw a rat scuttering into a dark corner as we turned on the lights.

   • 1886, Mrs. Henry Wood, Bessy Rane, Richard Bentley & Son, page 122:

     I scuttered all the way to Dallory, and scuttered back again ; and I don’t think I stopped to speak to a single soul, but Timothy Wilks.”

   • 1895 November, Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC:

     A mangy little jackal […] cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows.

   • 1988, David Quammen, The Flight of the Iguana:

     These [spiders] in my office were newborn babies. A hundred scuttering bambinos, each one no bigger than a poppyseed. Too small still for red hourglasses, too small even for red egg timers.

   • 2014, Anthony Holten, Of Other Days, [self-published], page 122:

     When the birds, especially the starlings, ate them in vast quantities, the results were often spectacular — they scuttered everywhere and over everything.

   • 2014, Arthur Leo Zagat, The Red Finger Pulp Mystery Megapack: 12 Tales of the Masked Hero, Wildside Press, page 61:

     Red Finger’s gun was still in his hand. He lifted it, and furred rodents scuttered away at the movement. He aimed the weapon carefully at the front of the dark truck body, low down.

• bullscutter
• scutterer

• Web scutter

• Cutters, curtest, cutters