A small or scattered amount of something scattered thinly over a surface, or the action of distributing liquid in fine drops.
From Middle Dutch 'sprenkel.' The word originally described the action of spraying water; over time it also came to mean any small scattered amount of something.
A 'sprinkling' of salt, stars, or people sounds mathematically vague—but that's exactly why it works: we use the same word for a few stars in the sky and a few people at a party, showing how language abstracts visual patterns.
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