litter

Plurallitters (some meanings)

Formslitters, littering, littered

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Trash and waste left lying scattered on the ground, especially in public places.

   City workers fined people who dropped litter near the train station.

   Strong winds carried litter from the overflowing bins into the river.

   Similarrubbish, trash, garbage, refuse, debris

   Note

   Swift could survey "all the litter" of a lady's dressing room in 1730, meaning any untidy clutter. The modern sense has narrowed to rubbish dropped in public places. It is uncountable: you pick up a piece of litter, not a litter. It also forms everyday terms such as litter bin and littering. The countable a litter belongs to other senses, such as a brood of young.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The whole group of young born to a mammal at a single birth.

   The breeder kept careful records of every litter the spaniel produced.

   Each litter of piglets was weighed within hours of being born.

   Similarbrood

   Note

   Darwin's word as well as the breeder's: On the Origin of Species notes "strongly-marked differences" in "the young of the same litter." Its best-known idiom is the runt of the litter, meaning the smallest or weakest. Applied to people it is insulting. George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss pities a man married into "a whole litter of women." Use it of humans only when you mean the contempt.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To drop or throw trash on the ground rather than placing it in a proper container.

   Visitors who litter along the trail face a steep penalty.

   Teachers reminded the students not to litter on the way home.

   Note

   The intransitive verb of public signs and fines: you simply litter, without naming what you dropped, so tossing a bottle out of a car window is littering. To say what was scattered or where, English uses the transitive pattern, as in strewing a place with things: he littered the road with bottles. The noun for what gets dropped is trash on the ground.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Loose absorbent material such as clay pellets or wood chips used to soak up the waste of pet animals.

   The pet store recommended an unscented litter for sensitive cats.

   He scooped the soiled litter into a bag each evening.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   Loose material such as straw or grass spread out as bedding for people or animals.

   Each stall was lined with clean litter before the horses arrived.

   The shepherd raked the old litter from the lambing pen.

   Similarbedding

   Note

   The sense every other one descends from: through Anglo-Norman and Old French litiere, the word goes back to Latin lectus, "bed." Before it meant trash it meant what you slept on, and it could even be owed as a duty. Joseph Collyer's History of England (1774) records a manor held by finding litter for the king's bed, grass in summer and straw in winter. It is uncountable: fresh litter, clean litter.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   Dead leaves and other loose organic matter that build up in a layer on the forest floor.

   Beetles and worms break down the litter that accumulates each autumn.

   Researchers measured how quickly the forest litter decomposed after a wet season.

   Note

   Foresters gave it an exact boundary. The US Bureau of Forestry's "Terms Used in Forestry and Logging" (1905) defines it as the part of the forest floor "not in an advanced state of decomposition," which means fresh fall rather than older, broken-down matter. Its usual collocation is leaf litter. It counts as habitat as well as debris, since animals use it for food, shelter, nesting and camouflage.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To scatter objects carelessly around a place.

   Please don't litter your papers across the shared table.

   The storm littered broken branches along the entire road.

   Similarscatter, strew

   Oppositegather

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To strew a place with scattered objects, leaving it covered in clutter.

   Please don't litter the hallway with your gear during practice.

   Vandals littered the square with shattered glass overnight.

   Similarstrew, clutter, cover

   Oppositeclear, tidy

   Note

   Here the object is the place, not the things: you litter a room with books. By contrast, the scattering verb takes the things themselves, as when papers are littered across a table. Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa (1726) has visitors finding "The Room with Volumes litter'd round." The passive comes naturally with this pattern: a floor littered with glass, a desk littered with notes.

9. 9
   noununcountable

   Bedding material such as straw mixed together with the dung of the animals that lay on it.

   Composted litter from the cattle shed enriched the vegetable beds.

   Workers shoveled the wet litter out of the barn before refilling it.

   Similarmanure, muck

   Note

   What comes out of the stall is not what went in: once animals have lain on bedding, it becomes litter of this soiled kind. The animals need not be livestock. Andrew Ure's The Philosophy of Manufactures (1835) insists that silkworms "must be well cleansed from the litter." Macaulay uses "the litter of a farmyard" under the bedroom windows to portray a neglectful heir's estate.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    A portable bed or couch carried on poles resting on the shoulders of bearers or the backs of animals.

    The aging emperor toured his provinces from the comfort of a curtained litter.

    Four porters set the litter down gently at the foot of the temple steps.

    Similarpalanquin

    Note

    Shakespeare's King Lear calls for one in a hurry: "There is a Litter ready, lay him in't." Two later uses grow from this carried couch: the stretcher for the wounded and the wider class of carried chairs. The word's descent from Latin lectus, "bed," is plain here. A litter is a bed that travels, whether it rests on bearers' shoulders or is slung from animals' backs.

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