shatter
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: agriculture
business
lifestyle
Etymology: From Middle English schateren (“to scatter, dash”), an assibilated form of Middle English scateren ("to scatter"; see scatter), from Old English scaterian, from Proto-Germanic *skat- (“to smash, scatter”), perhaps ultimately imitative.
Cognate with Dutch schateren (“to burst out laughing”), Low German schateren, Albanian shkatërroj (“to destroy, devastate”). Doublet of scatter.
Inflected forms:
form: shatters
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: shattering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: shattered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: shattered
pos: verb
tags: past
form: shatters
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To violently break something into pieces.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The miners used dynamite to shatter rocks.
a high-pitched voice that could shatter glass
The old oak tree has been shattered by lightning.
gloss: To destroy or disable something.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To smash, or break into tiny pieces.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To dispirit or emotionally defeat.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to be shattered in intellect
to have shattered hopes
to have a shattered constitution
a man of a loose, volatile, and shatter'd humour
Your death will shatter him. Which is what I want. Actually, I would prefer to kill him.
A CAT scan revealed she had an inoperable brain tumor. The news shattered Michele's mother.
I don't mean to shatter your ego, but this ain't the first time I've had gun pointed at me.
The marriage, of course, was long broken but Munoz knew that asking her for a divorce would shatter her.
gloss: Of seeds: to disperse (become dispersed) upon ripening.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Harvesting is done much as with alfalfa, but alsike seed is small and shatters if it is not handled carefully.
gloss: To scatter about.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
gloss: To fall sometimes connoting hard, as if to smash something, other times light and dispersed.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Bulletlike rain shattered down. Instantly, Willy was soaked to the skin. Then her right foot skidded out before her, and she felt her balance begin to go. Inevitably and with shocking swiftness came the moment when her body obeyed gravity[…]
The heavens opened up, and the rain shattered down. She trailed a finger down the window, following drops of water as they splashed and wept down the pane.
He learned forward […] and the sleeting rain shattered down like diamonds from the brim of his hat.
... rain shattered down on the pub windows,[…]
gloss: A fragment of anything shattered.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
countable
examples: to break a glass into shatters
it will fall upon the glass of the sconce, and break it into shatters
gloss: A (pine) needle.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: My usual habit is, as soon as I get my wheat trodden out, and my corn secured in the fall, to litter my farm yard (and if my cultivation is far off, I select some warm spot near the field) with leaves and pine shatters, (preferring the former) ...
They are preserved in cellars, or out of doors in kilns. The method of fixing them is to raise the ground a few inches, where they are to be placed, and cover with pine shatters to the depth of six inches or more.
Grandpa snapped his fingers. "Consarn it all!" he sputtered. "I plumb forgot the pine shatters. Paul and Maureen, you gather some nice smelly pine shatters from off 'n the floor of the woods. Nothin' makes a better cushion for pony feet as pine shatters ..."
gloss: A scattering, a smattering; a quantity of something scattered, like a sprinkling of seeds or a shower of rain.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: There's a tidy shatter of sin already in the Fee, says Parson. Ah, says I, but us can't all be saints like yourself, Parson.
[He] steps out into the rain. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust, to get used to the misty glow of the moon above them, to take in the wild look of their yard, and the shatter of rain. The insects have escaped it at least, hidden beneath the cover of grass and foliage, beneath the low-hanging branches of the jacarandas and poincianas. Birds huddle there as well,[…]
gloss: A form of concentrated cannabis.
pos: noun
tags: slang
uncountable
Synonyms: shiver
Derived words: antishatter
ear-shattering
earthshattering
earth-shattering
heart-shattering
nonshatter
shatterable
shatter attack
shatterbox
shatterbrained
shattercane
shatter cone
shatterer
shatterpated
shatterproof
shatter the ice
shattery
unshatter
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