Clutter

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈklÊŒtÉ™(ɹ)/
• US IPA: /ˈklÊŒtÉš/, ˈklʌɾɚ
• Rhymes: -ÊŒtÉ™(r)

Origin

Compare Welsh cludair ("heap, pile"), cludeirio ("to heap").

Full definition of clutter

Noun

1. A confused disordered jumble of things.
• L'EstrangeHe saw what a clutter there was with huge, overgrown pots, pans, and spits.
• 2013, William E. Conner, An Acoustic Arms Race, Nonetheless, some insect prey take advantage of clutter by hiding in it. 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. (obsolete) Clatter; confused noise.
3. Background echos, from clouds etc., on a radar or sonar screen.
4. (countable) A group of cats; the collective noun for cats.
• 2008, John Robert Colombo, The Big Book of Canadian Ghost Stories, IntroductionOrganizing ghost stories is like herding a clutter of cats: the phenomenon resists organization and classification.

Derived terms

• surface clutter
• volume clutter

Verb

1. To fill something with clutter.
• 2013-05-25, No hiding place, In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. 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.
3. To make a confused noise; to bustle.
• TennysonIt goose cluttered here, it chuckled there.