littering

Verb

litter (third-person singular simple present litters, present participle littering, simple past and past participle littered)

1. (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.
2. (transitive) To scatter carelessly about.
3. (transitive) To strew (a place) with scattered articles.
   • Their Clamour, 'lighting from their Chairs, / Grew lowder, all the way up Stairs; / At Entrance louder, where they found, / The Room with Volumes litter'd round; […]1726, [Jonathan Swift], Cadenus and Vanessa. A Poem, London: […] J. Roberts […], →OCLC, page 18
4. (transitive) To give birth to, in the manner of animals.
   • We might conceive that dogs were created blind, because we observe they were littered so with us.1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC
5. (intransitive) To produce a litter of young.
   • A desert […] where the she-wolf still littered.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
6. (transitive) To supply (cattle etc.) with litter; to cover with litter, as the floor of a stall.
   • Tell them how they litter their jades.1693, John Hacket, Scrinia reserata: a Memorial offered to the great Deservings of John Williams

See all 20 meanings of litter