Link Centre Dictionary

smatter

smat·ter

UK/ˈsmætə/ US/ˈsmætəɹ/ uncommon obsolete us

verb

1.

work with in a non-serious manner

  • “She dabbles in astronomy”
  • “He plays around with investments bu he never makes any money”
Synonyms
2.

to talk foolishly

  • “The two women babbled and crooned at the baby”
Synonyms
3.

speak with spotty or superficial knowledge

  • “She smatters Russian”

Origin

The verb is derived from Middle English smateren, smatteren, smater, smatere (“to make dirty, defile; to talk idly, chatter; to speak foolishly”); further etymology uncertain, compare the following: * Middle English smotten (“to corrupt, debase, defile”) (whence English smot (obsolete)), related to Late Middle High German smotzen, a variant of smutzen (whence modern German schmutzen (“to become dirty or soiled; to make dirty, soil”)), from smuz (“dirt”). * Danish smadre (“to smash”), German schmettern (“to smash; to resound”) (from Middle High German smetern (“to chatter; to rattle; (dialectal) to make a smacking sound”)); Norwegian Bokmål smadre (“to smash”), Swedish smattra (“to make short, sharp, quickly repeating noises, patter, rattle”), possibly originally onomatopoeic. However, the Oxford English Dictionary says “real connection is very doubtful”. The noun is derived from the verb.

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.