shard

plural shards · alternative sherd

1. A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.

   You know there is something fascinating beyond that wall because someone's tried to stop you seeing over, and there are shards of glass embedded in the top.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 29

   Synonyms: potsherd

2. broadlyA piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.

   1 more example

   2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)https://web.archive.org/web/20150212214621/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/pilgrim-roads/salopek-text Inside its exhibit hall, behind panes of glass, in a white-lit lab, a team of restorers works on an ancient Byzantine floor: 44 square yards of stone shards rescued from Lot’s Cave Monastery.

   Synonyms: splinter

3. cookingA food preparation similar in shape to a shard of, e.g., glass, generally made from a sheet of a hard product that is then shattered to produce smaller pieces.

   A shard of chocolate adorns the dish.

4. A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
5. InternetgamesAn instance of an MMORPG that is one of several independent and structurally identical virtual worlds, none of which has so many players as to exhaust a system's resources.

   1 more example

   1997, Ultima Online. The term "shard" is related to the backstory of the game, in which the Gem of Immortality is shattered by the Stranger, the protagonist of Ultima I. "The planet was still bound to the jewel's magic, even as it lay shattered upon the floor of Mondain's castle. For, within each shattered remnant of the jewel, dwelled a perfect likeness of Sosaria. Thus is the world in which you are born, live, and die. Brittania, that was once Sosaria, now exists as a thousand worlds, each with its own peoples, history and destiny. This Brittania is but one of many in the multiverse that is... ...ULTIMA ONLINE." - Intro cinematic to the game, written by Michael Morlan https://web.archive.org/web/20080706122926/http://michael-morlan.net/pages/production/prod_uo.htm

6. computingA component of a sharded distributed database.

   Synonyms: partition

7. in pluralsingularslangA piece of crystal methamphetamine.

present singular third person shards · participle present sharding · participle past sharded · past sharded · alternative sherd

1. intransitiveTo fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
2. transitiveTo break (something) into shards.
3. InternettransitivegamesTo divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.

1. uncountableThe plant chard.

   Not Heathpout, or the rarer Bird, Which Phasis, or Ionia yields, More pleasing Morsels would afford Than the fat Olives of my Fields; Than Shards or Mallows for the Pot, That keep the loosen’d Body sound, Or than the Lamb that falls by Lot, To the just Guardian of my Ground.

   1684, John Dryden, “From Horace, Epode 2”, in The Second Part of Miscellany Poems, 4th edition, London: Jacob Tonson, page 79