dispersion.

1. The spreading or scattering of people, particles or other things over an area or through a medium.

2. The spread of observations or values around each other or a reference value.

3. Variation in wave propagation speed with frequency or wavelength, which can separate components of a wave.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• spatial dispersion
• dispersion of particles

On the page

Spatial dispersion made the settlement pattern difficult to represent with a single center.

The experiment tracked dispersion of particles through the moving liquid.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Usually uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: definition, comparison, qualification, causal analysis. Disciplines: academic writing, institutional analysis, general research. Commonness: moderately common.