Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

declutter

UK/diːˈklʌtə(ɹ)/US/diːˈklʌtə(ɹ)/
verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — clot sits at #6,235Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: decluttering

To declutter is to get rid of everything you do not need. Declutter the loft, declutter before moving.

The hard part is deciding rather than lifting, which is why it takes so much longer than expected. To declutter properly means letting things leave the house rather than moving them upstairs.

Definitions of declutter

  1. 1verbdeclutterTo get rid of everything you do not need.C1

    “They spent a whole weekend trying to declutter one small bedroom.”

declutter is a clearing.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    cloteren — to form clots; coagulate; heap on

  2. English

    clutter

  3. English, today

    declutter

Built from

  • clot · Middle English — clot

From de- + clutter. clutter comes from Middle English cloteren (“to form clots; coagulate; heap on”), from clot (“clot”), equivalent to clot + er. Compare Welsh cludair (“heap, pile”), cludeirio (“to heap”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Cleaning & Housework

Practise this word

declutter in the wild

  • Compulsive decluttering is a pattern of behaviorde that is characterized by an excessive desire to discard objects from one's home and living areas.

    Compulsive decluttering

  • Compulsive decluttering is a type of disorder that is classified within a broad name, obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD.

    Compulsive decluttering

  • Swedish death cleaning is a decluttering method historically practised in Sweden.

    Swedish death cleaning

  • In the show, three Swedish people help Americans declutter and detach from their belongings.

    Swedish death cleaning

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the clot family

clutterclod

declutter — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

  • clot