scattered

Related to scattered: scatted

be scattered to the four winds

To be dispersed across a wide area. Our family has been scattered to the four winds now that all of our kids are in college in different states.
See also: four, scattered, wind

scatter about

1. To strew, distribute, or disperse things all around (some place), especially in a haphazard or aimless manner. A noun or pronoun can be used between "scatter" and "about." I leaped into the pile of leaves and scattered them about. The cat jumped onto my desk and scattered about all my important documents. I scattered my grandmother's ashes about the field, as she instructed in her will.
2. To separate and distribute rays of light in many different directions. A noun or pronoun can be used between "scatter" and "about." The crystal scatters the sunlight about in a myriad of colors. The gems in the cave scattered about the light from the flashlight.
See also: scatter

scatter around

1. To strew, distribute, or disperse things all around (some place), especially in a haphazard or aimless manner. A noun or pronoun can be used between "scatter" and "around." I leaped into the pile of leaves and scattered them around. The cat jumped onto my desk and scattered around all my important documents. I scattered my grandmother's ashes around the field, as she instructed in her will.
2. To separate and distribute rays of light in many different directions. A noun or pronoun can be used between "scatter" and "around." The crystal scatters the sunlight around in a myriad of colors. The gems in the cave scattered around the light from the flashlight.
See also: around, scatter

scattered from here to breakfast

Spread out all over the place. Alludes to the notion of it taking until breakfast the next morning to gather or organize everyone or everything. I used to work with veterans in my local community, but after all these budget cuts, the vets I have to look after are scattered from here to breakfast. We've got volunteers scattered from here to breakfast looking for that missing child.
See also: breakfast, here, scattered
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

scattered

mod. drug intoxicated; confused by drug use. (see also scat.) Those poor kids are so scattered, they can’t even get themselves to class.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

scattered from here to breakfast

In disarray. It's been suggested that something that is total disorder would take the rest of the day and all through the night—that is, until breakfast—to correct. Also heard as “from Hell to breakfast.”
See also: breakfast, here, scattered
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • be scattered to the four winds
  • to the (four) wind(s)
  • to the four winds
  • to the wind
  • spread out
  • four
  • these days
  • soak (someone) to the bone
  • strike sail
  • sack time
References in periodicals archive
Meanwhile, the trough of a low pressure area will also bring cloudy skies with scattered rain over the Visayas, Caraga, and the rest of Mindanao.
Expect rain in Luzon, Visayas - Pagasa
It can be seen from the results that when scattering angle varies from [[theta].sub.s] = 0[degrees] to [[theta].sub.s] = 90[degrees], scattering from both ship and coupling interaction preponderate in the total scattered field because of dihedral reflectors on the ship and dihedral reflectors formed by flank of the ship and the sea surface.
Electromagnetic Scattering of Electrically Large Ship above Sea Surface with SBR-SDFM Method
For example, acoustic energy flux vectors of the incident plane wave and the spherical scattered wave at time zero are shown in Figure 1.
A Study on the Scattering Energy Properties of an Elastic Spherical Shell in Sandy Sediment Using an Improved Energy Method
Chang, "A data compression technique for scattered fields from complex targets," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol.
Sliding scattering center model for extended streamlined targets
Pak, "Angular correlation function and scattering coefficient of electromagnetic waves scattered by a buried object under a two-dimensional rough surface," J.
Analysis of scattering from three-dimensional objects buried below a random rough surface by Monte-Carlo MPSTD method
The quantity [a.sub.s] is proportional to the total scattered flux, while the quantity [a.sub.sp] is proportional to the scattered flux within the detector acceptance aperture which is denoted by the symbol [DELTA] in Eq.
Measurement of absorption and scattering with an integrating sphere detector: application to microalgae
Combining the multiple scattering equation of light and the superposition principle of electromagnetic theory, the exciting electric field upon the ith scatterer ([E.sub.exc.sup.(i)] can be expressed as the sum of the applied incident electric radiation ([E.sub.inc)] and the scattered fields of all the remaining particles ([E.sub.s.sup.(j)]) such that:
Theoretical study of the scattering efficiency of rutile titanium dioxide pigments as a function of their spatial dispersion
Six additional detectors are used to measure the differential intensity between scattered light of the two polarizations.
Sizing up particles: with the increasing importance of controlling particle sizes throughout industry, laser diffraction remains a proven, robust technique for particle characterization
The theory of Mie (14, 15) gives an exact solution of the Maxwell equations governing the problem of the light scattered by an isotropic sphere of radius a into an isotropic medium.
Online light scattering measurements: a method to assess morphology development of polymer blends in a twin-screw extruder
Reionization creates clumps of free electrons, and when the microwave background encountered this patchy, electrically charged fog, some of the stream of CMB photons were scattered in another direction.
An Illuminating Journey
To alleviate the limitation of the specimen observed, a topography using scattered x-rays diffracted ones, had been proposed (refs.
Application of x-ray spectroscopic scattering topography to rubber based composites
The technique uses a 128-element array of modulated scattering probes which vertically scans the antenna's field or the target's scattered field by electronic means while it moves mechanically in a horizontal direction.
Scattering technique speeds antenna patterns and radar cross-section measurements
The country will experience mostly cloudy skies as well as scattered and isolated rain amid the northeast monsoon and easterlies, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said on Tuesday.
Cloudy skies; scattered, isolated rain in PH for Tuesday - Pagasa
The fields scattered by an object below a rough surface were computed by the efficient propagation-inside-layer-expansion (PILE) method combined with the physical optics approximation [8].
An Efficient Hybrid Method for 3D Scattering from Inhomogeneous Object Buried beneath a Dielectric Randomly Rough Surface
Using the finite element method, we calculate the energy scattered by the circular SRR array under TE plane wave illumination in the frequency range of 1 GHz to 3 GHz.
Super/zero scattering characteristics of circular SRR arrays