Library / English Dictionary

STREW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: strewn   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cover; be dispersed over

Example:

Dead bodies strewed the ground

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "strew" is one way to...):

cover; spread over (form a cover over)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Sentence example:

They strew the floor with papers

Sense 2

Meaning:

Spread by scattering (

Example:

strew toys all over the carpet

Synonyms:

straw; strew

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "strew" is one way to...):

distribute; spread (distribute or disperse widely)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "strew"):

bestrew (cover by strewing)

litter (make a place messy by strewing garbage around)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something PP

Sentence example:

They strew papers over the floor

Derivation:

strewing (the act of scattering)

Credits

 Context examples: 

As I did the same I felt the hand of the man behind me grab at my ankle, but I kicked myself free and scrambled over a grass-strewn coping.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It therefore found in a wide variety of habitats: volcanic terrains, lava-strewn coasts, and clearings or limestone outcrops.

(Morinda citrifolia, NCI Thesaurus)

In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain or transversely upon other trees.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them into the house and put them away in the store-room.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He went to and fro, as if patrolling the house, and was never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Then she strewed the meal all about the cellar, and was quite pleased with her cleverness, and said, “How very neat and clean it looks!”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The days had gone by when a nobleman's hall was but a barn-like, rush-strewn enclosure, the common lounge and eating-room of every inmate of the castle.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)