Litter
Contents
English
Noun
Litter (countable and uncountable; plural Litters)- (countable) A platform mounted on two shafts, or a more elaborate construction, designed to be carried by two (or more) people to transport one (in luxury models sometimes more) third person(s) or (occasionally in the elaborate version) a cargo, such as a religious idol.
- (countable) The offspring of a mammal born in one birth.
- (uncountable) Material used as bedding for animals.
- (uncountable) Collectively, items discarded on the ground.
- (uncountable) Absorbent material used in an animal's litter tray
- (uncountable) Layer of fallen leaves and similar organic matter in a forest floor.
Synonyms
- (platform designed to carry a person or a load): palanquin, sedan chair, stretcher, cacolet
- (items discarded on the ground): waste, rubbish, garbage (US), trash (US), junk
Derived terms
Verb
Litter (third-person singular simple present Litters, present participle Littering, simple past and past participle Littered)
- (intransitive) To drop or throw trash without properly disposing of it (as discarding in public areas rather than trash receptacles).
- By tossing the bottle out the window, he was littering.
- (transitive) To give birth to, used of animals.
Derived terms
Adjectives for Litter
sable; terrible; intellectual; huge.
Adverbs for Litter
confusedly; untidily; sloppily; haphazardly; disheveledly; obtrusively.
Thesaurus
air mattress, arsy-varsiness, be confined, bear, bear a child, bear young, bed, bed down, bedding, bedstead, bier, bolster, brancard, break, bridle, brood, brush, bunk, cacolet, calve, camel litter, cast, clamjamfry, clutch, clutter, collateral, couch, curry, currycomb, cushion, dandy, debris, derange, disarrange, disarray, dishevel, dislocate, disorder, disorganize, dolly, doolie, doss, drench, drop, dust, farrago, farrow, fawn, feed, foal, fodder, fragments, fry, garbage, gentle, get, give birth, gocart, groom, gurney, handbarrow, handle, harness, hash, hatch, have, have a baby, have young, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hitch, hodgepodge, hysteron proteron, innerspring mattress, issue, jampan, jumble, jungle, junk, kelter, kip, kitten, labor, lamb, lie in, lumber, manage, mat, mattress, mess, mess up, milk, misarrange, mishmash, muddle, muss, muss up, nest, odds and ends, offal, offspring, pad, pallet, pillow, pup, raff, refuse, riffraff, rub down, rubbish, rubble, ruffle, rug, rummage, rumple, saddle, scatter, scramble, scrap, sedan, sedan chair, shoddy, sleeping bag, sofa, spat, spawn, springs, stretcher, strew, tame, tend, the hay, the sack, throw, topsy-turviness, topsy-turvydom, tousle, train, trash, travail, truck, tumble, turmoil, underbed, underbedding, unholy mess, waste, water, welter, whelp, yean, yoke, young
Etymology
From French litière, from lit, ‘bed’, from Latin lectus; confer Greek λέκτρον. Had the sense ‘bed’ in very early English, but then came to mean ‘portable couch’, ‘bedding’, ‘strewn rushes (for animals)’, ...
