Strew
verb ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To distribute objects or pieces of something over an area, especially in a random manner. dated
"to strew sand over a floor"
- 2 cover; be dispersed over wordnet
- 3 To cover, or lie upon, by having been scattered. archaic
"Leaves strewed the ground."
- 4 spread by scattering (‘straw’ is archaic) wordnet
- 5 To spread abroad; to disseminate. archaic, transitive
"She may strew dangerous conjectures."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 To populate with at random points; to cause to appear randomly distributed throughout.
"error-strewn"
Example
More examples""Go, set the storm-winds free, / and sink their ships or scatter them astray, / and strew their corpses forth, to weltering waves a prey.""
Etymology
From Middle English strewen, strawen, streowen, from Old English strewian, strēawian, strēowian (“to strew, scatter”), from Proto-West Germanic *strauwjan, from Proto-Germanic *strawjaną (“to strew”), from Proto-Indo-European *strew- (“to spread, scatter”). Cognate with Scots strow, straw (“to strew”), West Frisian streauwe (“to strew”), Dutch strooien (“to strew, scatter, sprinkle”), German streuen (“to strew, scatter”), Swedish strö (“to strew”), Icelandic strá (“to strew”), Norwegian Nynorsk strå (“to strew”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.