# clutter
## English
### Etymology

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”).

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˈklʌtə(ɹ)/
** Audio (Southern England):(file)
* (US) IPA: /ˈklʌtɚ/, [ˈklʌɾɚ]
* Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)

### Noun

clutter (countable and uncountable, plural clutters)
* (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.
* (uncountable) Background echoes, from clouds etc., on a radar or sonar screen.
* (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.
* (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 […]
* (mathematics) A Sperner family.

#### Derived terms

* anticlutter
* bioclutter
* cluttercore
* clutterfree
* clutter-free
* clutterless
* clutterous
* cluttersome
* cluttery
* cyberclutter
* declutter
* e-clutter
* surface clutter
* unclutter
* volume clutter

#### Translations
### Verb

clutter (third-person singular simple present clutters, present participle cluttering, simple past and past participle cluttered)
* (transitive) 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.
* (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, →OCLC:It battereth and cluttereth into knots and balls
* (intransitive) 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.
* (transitive, intransitive) To utter words hurriedly, especially (but not exclusively) as a speech disorder (compare cluttering).

#### Derived terms

* clutterer
* clutter up
* overclutter

#### Translations
### References

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