Gather and scatter are opposites. Gather is to bring scattered things together into one place. Scatter is to throw or send things in different directions so they spread out irregularly. Gather draws things together; scatter flings them apart.
They are the plainest pair of opposites for bringing together and flinging apart. Gather is the everyday word for drawing scattered things into one place — leaves, people, facts. Scatter, close to 'shatter', throws things out in every direction so they land with no pattern. A rake gathers the leaves into a heap; a gust scatters them again across the yard. One collects; the other spreads.
gather
To gather is to bring scattered things together into one place — leaves into a heap, papers off a desk, a crowd into a square. It is the plainest, most general member of its family: where you collect by careful selection and things accumulate almost on their own, you simply gather whatever is spread out and draw it in. From the Old English gaderian, 'to bring together', it serves the concrete (gather wood) and the abstract alike (gather evidence, gather your thoughts).
scatter
To scatter is to send things flying apart so they land here and there with no order — a handful of gravel flung across a path, papers blown off a desk, a flock startled into the air. The word stresses suddenness and irregularity: what scatters is strewn unevenly and left wherever it falls, not neatly distributed. It works both ways, much like its cousin disperse — a crowd can scatter, or police can scatter it — but where disperse suggests an even thinning-away, scatter keeps that sense of a sudden, random fling.
| gather | scatter | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | bring scattered things into one place | throw things apart in all directions |
| Direction | inward, into one place | outward, at random |
| The result | a collection in one place | an irregular, patternless spread |
| Often with | leaves, people, facts, a crowd | balls, papers, seeds, a crowd |
| Noun | a gathering | scattering / a scatter |
| Example | Gather the leaves. | The papers scattered. |
Ask which way things move — into one place or wide apart. Gather draws scattered things inward into one place — leaves raked into a heap. Scatter flings them outward with no pattern — the same leaves blown back across the yard. If things are brought together into one place, that is gather; if they are thrown apart at random, that is scatter.
gather
- iGather the leaves into a pile before it rains.
- iiA crowd gathered outside the gates.
- iiiShe gathered the facts she needed for the report.
scatter
- iA gust scattered the papers across the yard.
- iiThe crowd scattered the moment the alarm sounded.
- iiiShe scattered the seeds by hand across the bed.
Gather and scatter are direct, everyday opposites — one brings scattered things into one place, the other flings them wide. Both can take almost anything (leaves, people, seeds), and both can be transitive or, for crowds, intransitive. The clean contrast makes them a natural pair in description.
A clean, everyday antonym pair, useful across registers. Gather suits drawing things together — 'gather the data', 'a crowd gathered'; scatter suits flinging apart — 'scattered showers', 'the crowd scattered'. Examiners like the tidy contrast of direction. Note that 'scattered' also works as an adjective for things spread thinly (scattered villages), the opposite of gathered or concentrated. The nouns are a gathering and scattering.