Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Scatterbrained; flighty.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Showery.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective slang, UK
Scatterbrained ;flighty .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective lacking sense or discretion
- adjective lost in thought; showing preoccupation
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Janet turned up fashionably late and scatty as usual, almost leaving one of her troupe of children in the back of the cab.
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A passing insistence on detail – every meal is described, and even the trials of travelling Ryanair get a mention – helps chain a sometimes scatty book to earth.
La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq – review George Walden 2010
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"I find the millennial beat of the water, which has flowed here for thousands of years, a good antidote to the scatty world I live in," he says.
Streets on the Thames Charlie Corbett 2011
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Instead of an evil stepmother, as the Grimms have it, the children have a loving but scatty mother and a caring but drunken father.
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They are excellent, and so am I when I am not lazy, dumb, prejudiced, boring, offensive, and scatty.
The Awesome Movement and the Dreaded Even Thoughs karenhealey 2010
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Young said she had looked back on her somewhat scatty notes from the judging process and words such as "extraordinary, special, striking, moving".
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Anyone who has seen Joan Rivers in action will recognise the characters as no-nonsense Beverly (Chaffin) and scatty Ronna (Denbo) wrest control of our love lives.
Ronna and Beverly 2010
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Everyone in the building knew whose car that was and now someone who lived near me knew that I was “scatty.”
Unbearable Lightness Portia de Rossi 2010
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She's impulsive and emotional, scatty, hello darling, mwah mwah, and dressed all wrong.
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This scatty mish-mash of a summer, in which at its height England will have gone almost three months without a Test match, has lost its shape.
Ian Bell helps England stroll past Bangladesh at Trent Bridge Mike Selvey at Trent Bridge 2010
brtom commented on the word scatty
"... and Tommy Caffrey could never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that held his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf of brown bread with golden syrup on. "
Joyce, Ulysses, 13
January 14, 2007
ShanShen commented on the word scatty
Found this word in Chapter 2 of Agatha Christie's book Nemesis.
June 3, 2012
michaelt42 commented on the word scatty
Nice if you would share the context of scatty with us, ShanShen!
June 3, 2012