scatterbrain

scatterbrain

Someone who is very forgetful, unfocused, or disorganized. Sorry for forgetting about your recital. I've been such a scatterbrain, lately! We used to have a total scatterbrain managing our accounts, so things were all over the place for a while.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

scatterbrain

n. a forgetful person; someone who is mentally disorganized. Aunt Martha is a real scatterbrain. She always forgets where her glasses are.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • a mind like a sieve
  • sieve
  • have a memory like a sieve
  • have a mind like a sieve
  • have a mind/memory like a sieve
  • make it up to (one)
  • make up to
  • in a heap
  • reach out after (someone or something)
  • Dutch uncle
References in periodicals archive
Scatterbrain Home textiles, tabletop Marty Segelbaum,
Recently dismissed Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stated in his book that the planning for an invasion of Iraq was well underway before 9-11 and found himself denounced as a scatterbrain who didn't know what he was talking about.
And his former boss at St Andrew's, Barry Fry, believes that when it comes to the crunch, the scatterbrain striker will provehe is top banana in the management stakes.
One of the things that has come out from police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys is that if you see one partner being calm, slick, smooth, and saying, "Mary Smith is just a scatterbrain that needs help, and this and that," and the other person is scattered, disorganized, and speaking disjointedly, then you arrest the slick organized one and not the one who's disorganized.
Take it down Tear it up Turn it over Make it new out of old makings: exert what that venerable scatterbrain in Weimar once called the Power of Pulling Yourself Together whereby the master is first revealed.
This scatterbrain environment has other names, other toxic characteristics: carelessness, apathy, short attention spans, poor listening, bad service, shoddy work, self-centeredness, indifference.
81, `(The Greeks of Crete) are not costly in their apparell, for they weare but linnen cloathes.' Hotman [the French Protestant scholar, Jean Hotman, Seigneur de Villiers], in his French version of 1603, renders his [James's] text here by bigarre comme un gendarme esuente -- i.e., clad in motley like a scatterbrain.(2)
The year's popular songs included "South of the Border," "Oh Johnny," "Scatterbrain," "Careless," "In an Old Dutch Garden," "When You Wish upon a Star," "Woodpecker Song," "Playmates," "I'll Never Smile Again," "Blueberry Hill," and "Only Forever."
In 1643 he became an actor and cofounder of the Illustre Theatre, for which he wrote his first plays, notable among them L ' etourdi ( The Scatterbrain, 1665) and Le Depit amoureux ( The Amorous Vexation, 1659).
Let people see you can be relied on to fulfil obligations for no one will entrust important responsibilities to a scatterbrain.
Maria is really no scatterbrain, as von Trapp comes to appreciate when finally turning his attention to her and away from the haughty aristocrat Elsa Schraeder (Emma Clifford), who seems destined to join him at the altar as Austria submits to the Nazi jackboot.
In the story, Hamlisch becomes Vernon Gersch, an uptight, award-winning composer, while Bayer becomes Sonia Walsk, an up-and-coming lyricist who also happens to be a scatterbrain.
"On one hand you think it's someone who's a bit of a scatterbrain, where literally thoughts fly off like spores.
23 In which 1950s sitcom was dance band leader Ricky Ricardo's patience sorely tried by his scatterbrain wife?
Then there's the scatterbrain who burns the vegetables on a regular basis and forgets to buy the provisions for the household, then looks at the hungry squad that awaits her and utters a very puzzled, "What?" (Short for "What did you think?