Strewn means scattered or spread around in a messy, careless way. When your toys are strewn across your bedroom floor, they're lying all over the place instead of being neatly put away. After a windy storm, tree branches might be strewn across the yard, tossed randomly by the gusts.

The word comes from strew, which means to scatter or spread things around. Unlike arranging items carefully in a pattern, strewn suggests disorder or randomness. Papers might be strewn about after someone drops a folder, or clothes might be strewn on a chair when someone's in a hurry.

You'll often see strewn used to describe the aftermath of something: leaves strewn along the sidewalk after autumn winds, or confetti strewn around a room after a celebration. The word captures that sense of things being everywhere at once, with no particular order or plan. When something is strewn, it usually needs to be picked up or cleaned up, though sometimes, like flower petals strewn at a wedding, the scattered arrangement creates something beautiful.