shard, sherd, fragment
(noun) a broken piece of a brittle artifact
Source: WordNet® 3.1
shard (plural shards)
A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
Synonym: potsherd
(by extension) A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.
Synonym: splinter
A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
(online gaming) An 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.
(databases) A component of a sharded distributed database.
Synonym: partition
(slang, singular or plural) A piece of crystal methamphetamine.
shard (third-person singular simple present shards, present participle sharding, simple past and past participle sharded)
(intransitive) To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
(transitive) To break (something) into shards.
(online gaming, transitive) To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.
shard (uncountable)
The plant chard.
• Dhars, Hards, hards
Source: Wiktionary
Shard, n.
Definition: A plant; chard. [Obs.] Dryden.
Shard, n. Etym: [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. 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. (Zoöl.)
Definition: 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.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
28 April 2024
(adjective) of or relating to an inheritable character that is controlled by several genes at once; of or related to or determined by polygenes
The Boston Tea Party helped popularize coffee in America. The hefty tea tax imposed on the colonies in 1773 resulted in America switching from tea to coffee. In the lead up to the Revolutionary War, it became patriotic to sip java instead of tea. The Civil War made the drink more pervasive. Coffee helped energize tired troops, and drinking it became an expression of freedom.
