Other forms: spattered, spattering, spatters
To spatter is to scatter drops across a surface. Fat in a hot pan, mud thrown up by a passing car.
The word is nearly always about liquid arriving where it was not wanted: spattered with paint, spattered with grease, a wall spattered with rain. It takes with for whatever lands and across for where it lands. As a noun, a spatter is the pattern the drops leave, and in criminal investigation blood spatter is a specialism of its own. Splatter is the louder, messier cousin, and splash is bigger again.
1verbspatterTo scatter drops of liquid over a surface.
“Hot oil spattered the tiles behind the cooker.”
2nounscatteringA scattering of drops.
“There was a spatter of paint on his sleeve.”
Dutch
spatten — to spout, burst
English, today
spatter
Probably from Middle Low German - or Dutch spatten (“to spout, burst”) er. Related to spit (“saliva”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word