shard

English

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• sherd

Etymology

From Middle English, from Old English sceard. Akin to German Scharte (“notch”), Old Norse skarð (“notch, hack”) ( > Danish skår).

Pronunciation

• (Australia) IPA: /ʃaːd/
• (UK) IPA: /ʃɑːd/
• (US) IPA: /ʃɑɹd/

Noun

shard (plural shards)

1. A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
2. A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.
3. A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
4. (online role-playing) 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.
   • 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,^[sic] 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^[sic], that was once Sosaria, now exists as a thousand worlds, each with its own peoples, history and destiny. This Brittania^[sic] is but one of many in the multiverse that is... ...ULTIMA ONLINE." - Intro cinematic to the game, written by Michael Morlan [1]

Derived terms

• potsherd

Synonyms

• potsherd
• splinter (of glass)

Translations

piece

Danish: skår n. Finnish: siru (fi), sirpale (fi) French: éclat (fr) m. German: Scherbe (de) f. Hungarian: cserépdarab (hu) (pottery), szilánk (hu) (glass) Italian: coccio (it) m.

Macedonian: откршок (mk) (ótkršok) m., срча (mk) (s'rča) f. (of glass) Polish: skorupa m., odłamek f. Portuguese: caco (pt) m. Russian: осколок (ru) (oskólok) m., черепок (ru) (čerepók) m. (esp. ceramic) Serbian: krhotina (sr) Spanish: casco (es) m., añicos (es) m. pl.

Verb

shard (third-person singular simple present shards, present participle sharding, simple past and past participle sharded)

1. (intransitive) To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
2. (transitive) To break (something) into shards.
3. (online role-playing, transitive) To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.

Translations

to fall apart

French: éclater (fr)

References

• (pottery) Shard, in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.

Anagrams

• hards