Dissolve and scatter both break something apart, with a difference in how. Dissolve is for a solid to break down and lose its shape into a liquid, or for a body to be formally ended. Scatter is to throw or send things in different directions so they spread out irregularly. Dissolve breaks a thing down in place; scatter flings things wide apart.
Both undo a whole, but in different ways. Dissolve, from dis- 'apart' and solvere 'to loosen', lets a solid lose its shape into a liquid, or ends a body so it no longer stands. Scatter, close to 'shatter', throws things out in every direction with no pattern. A sugar cube dissolves in water; a break shot scatters the balls across the table. One loosens a thing apart into a liquid or an ending; the other flings countable things wide.
dissolve
To dissolve is for a solid to break apart into a liquid until it disappears into it — sugar dissolves in water — or, by extension, for something to fade out or be formally ended (a marriage, a company, a parliament is dissolved). From the Latin dissolvere, 'to loosen apart', from solvere 'to loosen', the root of solve and solvent. A substance dissolves when its particles separate and spread evenly through the liquid — the reverse of what happens when droplets coalesce. Governments dissolve; tension dissolves; a crowd can dissolve into laughter.
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.
| dissolve | scatter | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | break down into liquid; formally end | throw things apart in all directions |
| How | loosens apart in place, into a solvent | flung wide, sudden and random |
| Of what | a solid, or a body (company, marriage) | people, balls, papers, seeds |
| Noun | dissolution | scattering / a scatter |
| Example | The sugar dissolved. | The papers scattered. |
Ask whether a thing breaks down in place or is flung wide. Dissolve loosens a solid apart into a liquid, or ends a body — a sugar cube clouding away in water. Scatter throws countable things apart with no pattern — balls flung across a table. If a solid breaks down or a body is ended, that is dissolve; if things are thrown wide at random, that is scatter.
dissolve
- iStir until the sugar dissolves completely.
- iiThe partnership was dissolved after thirty years.
- iiiThe prime minister asked the monarch to dissolve parliament.
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.
Dissolve breaks a thing down where it is — a solid into liquid, or a body formally ended; scatter flings countable things wide apart. They overlap only loosely, in the idea of a whole coming undone. Dissolve has a chemistry sense and an institutional one; scatter is about physical flinging-apart.