Meet and scatter are opposites in direction. Meet is to come together with someone or something, or to satisfy a requirement. Scatter is to throw or send things in different directions so they spread out irregularly. Meet brings things together at a point; scatter flings them apart at random.
One brings things into contact at a point; the other throws them wide apart. Meet, an old everyday word, means to come together at the same point — two roads, two people. Scatter, close to 'shatter', throws things out in every direction so they land with no pattern. Two travellers meet at a junction; a break shot scatters the balls across the table. One converges to a meeting; the other flies apart into disorder.
meet
To meet is for separate things to come together at one place or moment — two roads meet, old friends meet, a river meets the sea. From the Old English mētan, it has always carried this coming-together, but its real academic value is abstract: to meet a deadline, a target, or a demand is to be enough for it, to rise to what is asked. Where independent paths converge on the same point, they meet — and from that point they may go on together.
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.
| meet | scatter | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | come into contact; satisfy a requirement | throw things apart in all directions |
| Direction | together, to a point | outward, at random |
| The result | things in contact at a point | an irregular, patternless spread |
| Often with | people, roads, a deadline, a need | balls, papers, seeds, a crowd |
| Noun | a meeting | scattering / a scatter |
| Example | The roads meet here. | The papers scattered. |
Ask whether things come together or fly apart. Meet brings things into contact at a point — two travellers reaching the same junction. Scatter flings an arrangement apart with no pattern — balls broken across a table. If things come together at a point, that is meet; if they are thrown apart at random, that is scatter.
meet
- iLet's meet at the station at noon.
- iiThe two rivers meet just below the town.
- iiiThe design meets all the safety requirements.
scatter
- iThe crowd scattered the moment the alarm sounded.
- iiA gust scattered the papers across the yard.
- iiiShe scattered the seeds by hand across the bed.
Meet brings things into contact at a point; scatter flings things apart with no pattern. They oppose in direction — together versus wide apart. Meet also has a sense scatter has no match for: to satisfy a requirement (meet a deadline).