[Goes with the sb., q.v.]
† 1. intr. To run together in clots; to clot, coagulate. Also trans. = CLOTTER v. 1. Obs.
1601. Holland, Pliny, XII. xvii. It battereth and cluttereth into knots and balls. Ibid., XXV. xiii. (R.). It killith them … by congealing and cluttering their bloud.
1633. Rogers, Treat. Sacram., ii. 129. Their sinne … lies cluttered in their soules.
1671. True Gentlewomans Delight, 114 (N.). To make Cream Clutter.
2. To run together or collect in knots or heaps; to crowd together. (Quot. 1598 connects with 3.)
1556. J. Heywood, Spider & F., li. 6. The spiders, togither clustring and cluttring.
1598. Grenewey, Tacitus’ Ann., XI. x. (1622), 152. All the rest came cluttering about [circumstrepunt] him, crying that he should haste away to the Campe.
1610. Rowlands, Martin Mark-all, 45. To whom … masterlesse men after they heard of his fame, came cluttering on heapes.
a. 1734. North, Exam., III. vii. ¶ 88. Villainy … clutters together in Heaps, and where you find one, all the rest are not far.
3. To run in crowded and bustling disorder.
1602. Hist. Eng., in Harl. Misc. (Malh.), II. 455. The middle of the field was filled with chariots, and horsemen, cluttering and running round about.
1724. De Foe, Mem. Cavalier (1840), 195. The coaches, horsemen and crowd, cluttered away, to be out of harm’s way.
1759. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, I. 2. Away they go cluttering like hey-go mad.
1824–9. Landor, Imag. Conv. (1846), II. 236/2. They clutter and run and rise and escape from him.
4. To run or move with noise of bustle and confusion; to make a confused noise or clatter.
1693. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen., 342. To clutter or clatter.
1768. E. Buys, Dict. Terms Art, To Clutter, to make a noise or hurly burly.
1808. J. Mayne, Siller Gun, 92.
| Arriving in an unco flutter, | |
| The coffee-cups began to clutter. |
1833. Tennyson, Goose, vii. It clutter’d here, it chuckled there.
† 5. trans. To heap or crowd together in a disorderly way. Obs. or dial.
a. 1631. Donne, Lett. (1651), 32. Which clutters not Prayses together.
1685. Cotton, trans. Montaigne, III. 190. We cannot make our selves sure of the supream Cause, and therefore clutter a great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them.
a. 1786. J. Collier (Tim Bobbin), Wks., 46. All the teawn were cluttert abeawt us.
6. To crowd (a place or space) with a disorderly assemblage of things. Now chiefly dial. and U.S.
1674. N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 127. [Lest] any stragling bodies clutter up its rooms and stifle it.
1685. Visit. Archdeaconry Ely, in Camb. Antiq. Communic., III. 346. The Chancell soe clutterd up wth a great Monumt that it leaves noe Room for ye Comunion Table.
1854. Thoreau, Walden, ii. (1886), 90. An unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture.
1874. Sussex Gloss., To clutter up, to throw into confusion: to crowd.
1885. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 8 Jan., 1/6. At present the sides of the highways … are cluttered with these pipes.
7. To throw into mental confusion and disorder. now dial. and U.S.
1685. Trial Lady A. Lisle, in State Trials, XI. 297. Witness. My lord, I am so baulked I do not know what I say myself—Tell me what you would have me to say, for I am cluttered out of my senses.
1888. Detroit Free Press, 5 Aug., 11/5. I’ve seed strange things in my time, but this clutters me!
8. To utter words confusedly and hurriedly: often, as a habitual defect of utterance; cf. CLUTTERER.
1654. Trapp, Comm. Job i. 19. This messenger cluttereth out all at once.
1656. Lovelace, Lucasta (1659), 73 (T.). All that they Bluster’d and clutter’d wisely for, you play.
1813. W. Taylor, Eng. Synonyms (1856), 254. Spoken with syllabic distinctness … articulated, and not cluttered.
1878. trans. Ziemssen’s Cycl. Med., XIV. 817. A young preacher who cluttered very badly.
