Meaning

(transitive) To splash (someone or something) with small droplets..

Definitions by Sense

1. (transitive) To splash (someone or something) with small droplets.
2. (transitive, figuratively) To cover, or lie upon (something) by having been scattered, as if by splashing.
3. (transitive) To distribute (a liquid) by sprinkling; to sprinkle around.
4. (transitive, figurative) To send out or disperse (something) as if in droplets.
5. (intransitive) To send out small droplets; to splash in small droplets (on or against something).
6. (obsolete, transitive, figurative) To injure by aspersion; to defame.
7. A spray or shower of droplets hitting a surface.
8. A spot or spots of a substance spattered on a surface.

Example Sentences

When my wet chihuahua shook himself, I was spattered with smelly water.

His axel-tree, and chariot wheeles, all spatterd with the blood Hurl’d from the steeds houes, and the strakes.

The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out.

He began to blow at the surface of the tea. He blew too hard and the tea spattered the skirt of Nurse Clock’s uniform.

1955, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Bowles (translators), Molloy by Samuel Beckett, in Three Novels, London: Calder, 1994, p. 128, The roof’s serrated ridge, the single chimney-stack with its four flues, stood out faintly against the sky spattered with a few dim stars.

[…] she seem’d to have woven the Rainbow into a loose Robe, which being so rarified that she might be seen through it, and also spatter’d with radiant Jewells in the forms of Starrs […]

The low, whitewashed houses between the red and green acacia trees are spattered with shell-holes […]

Patches of light sifting through them [the trees] spattered the concrete walks with sunshine.

Word Forms

• spatters
• spattering
• spattered

Synonyms for spatter

Related Words

When Should You Use Spatter?

Use spatter when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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