Adjacent Words

Shard definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

SH'ARD, n.
1. A piece or fragment of an earthen vessel or of any brittle substance. Obs.
2. The shell of an egg or of a snail.
3. A plant. [chard.]
4. A frith or strait; as a perilous shard.
5. A gap.
6. A fish.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a broken piece of a brittle artifact [syn: shard, sherd, fragment]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English, from Old English sceard; akin to Old English scieran to cut — more at shear Date: before 12th century 1. a. a piece or fragment of a brittle substance <shards of glass>; broadly a small piece or part ; scrap <little shards of time and space recorded by the camera's lens — Rosalind Krauss> b. shell, scale; especially elytron 2. (or sherd) fragments of pottery vessels found on sites and in refuse deposits where pottery-making peoples have lived 3. highly angular curved glass fragments of tuffaceous sediments

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a broken piece of pottery or glass etc. 2 = POTSHERD. 3 a fragment of volcanic rock. 4 the wing-case of a beetle. Etymology: OE sceard: sense 3 f. shard-borne (Shakesp.) = born in a shard (dial., = cow-dung), wrongly taken as 'borne on shards'

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Shard Shard (sh[aum]rd), n. A plant; chard. [Obs.] --Dryden.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Shard Shard, n. [AS. sceard, properly a p. p. from the root of scearn to shear, to cut; akin to D. schaard a fragment, G. scharte a notch, Icel. skar[eth]. See Shear, and cf. Sherd.] [Written also sheard, and sherd.] 1. A piece or fragment of an earthen vessel, or a like brittle substance, as the shell of an egg or snail. --Shak. The precious dish Broke into shards of beauty on the board. --E. Arnold. 2. (Zo["o]l.) The hard wing case of a beetle. They are his shards, and he their beetle. --Shak. 3. A gap in a fence. [Obs.] --Stanyhurst. 4. A boundary; a division. [Obs. & R.] --Spenser.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(shards) Shards are pieces of broken glass, pottery, or metal. Eyewitnesses spoke of rocks and shards of glass flying in the air. N-COUNT: oft N of n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Fragment, potsherd.

Moby Thesaurus

abrade, atomize, beat, bit, bones, bray, break, brecciate, butt, chaff, chip, chunk, clip, clipping, collop, comminute, contriturate, crumb, crumble, crush, culm, cut, cutting, deadwood, dishwater, disintegrate, dollop, draff, dregs, dust, end, fall to pieces, filings, flour, fragment, garbage, gash, gob, gobbet, grain, granulate, granulize, grate, grind, grind to powder, hogwash, hunk, husks, leavings, lees, levigate, lump, mash, mill, modicum, moiety, morsel, offal, offscourings, orts, paring, parings, particle, pestle, piece, potsherds, pound, powder, pulverize, rags, rasher, raspings, reduce to powder, refuse, scoop, scourings, scrap, scrap iron, scraps, scrunch, scum, shards, shatter, shaving, shavings, shiver, shred, slack, slag, slice, sliver, slop, slops, smash, smithereen, snack, snatch, snip, snippet, splinter, squash, stitch, stubble, stump, sweepings, swill, tares, tatter, triturate, wastage, waste, waste matter, wastepaper, weeds