Etymology

clutter

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Today it means: A confused disordered jumble of things. Full definition →

Middle English cloteren
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited fromcloteren“to form clots; coagulate; heap on”
  2. English todayclutter

From Middle English cloteren (“to form clots; coagulate; heap on”), from clot (“clot”), equivalent to clot + -er (frequentative suffix). Compare Welsh cludair (“heap, pile”), cludeirio (“to heap”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.