scutter

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• IPA^(key): /ˈskʌtə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)

scutter (countable and uncountable, plural scutters)

1. Thin excrement.
   • 2001, Ciaran O'Driscoll, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, page 74:

     Cows were always scuttering: they left mounds and trails of scutter all over the place.

2. A hasty run.

scutter (third-person singular simple present scutters, present participle scuttering, simple past and past participle scuttered)

1. To void thin excrement.
   • 1565, Alois Brandl, editor, King Daryus:

     Nay then I wil geue you no bread and butter.
     Here, take some, it will make thee to scutter.

   • 2001, Ciaran O'Driscoll, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, page 74:

     Cows were always scuttering: they left mounds and trails of scutter all over the place.

2. To run with a light pattering noise; to skitter.

   We saw a rat scuttering into a dark corner as we turned on the lights.

   • 1895 November, Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC:

     A mangy little jackal […] cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows.

   • 1988, David Quammen, The Flight of the Iguana:

     These [spiders] in my office were newborn babies. A hundred scuttering bambinos, each one no bigger than a poppyseed. Too small still for red hourglasses, too small even for red egg timers.

• bullscutter
• scutterer

• Web scutter

• Cutters, curtest, cutters