means Spread out irregularly over an area, or mentally disorganized and unable to focus.

from From the verb 'scatter,' which surfaced in Middle English (scateren) and is likely a variant of 'shatter' — the two words share a sound and a sense of things flying apart. The deeper roots are murky, possibly tied to a Germanic word for tossing or strewing. The '-ed' simply turns the act of throwing things in all directions into the state of having ended up that way.