scatterbrain
noun
scatterbrain is a noun meaning “A flighty, disorganized or forgetful person” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-C-A-T-T-E-R-B-R-A-I-N, and it appears about once in every 25 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of scatterbrain is scatterbrains.
What does scatterbrain mean?
noun
- 1
A flighty, disorganized or forgetful person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce scatterbrain?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-scatterbrain.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of scatterbrain
- scatterbrains plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is scatterbrain?
Scatterbrain appears about once in every 25 million words in written English, the 152,206th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Scatterbrain in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense flighty, disorganized or forgetful person:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tête de linotte, étourdi, étourdie |
| German | Wirrkopf, Schussel |
| Portuguese | distraído |
| Spanish | chorlito, alocado, atolondrado, pajarón |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does scatterbrain come from?
From scatter + brain.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).