shatter

verb

1. 1

   To violently break something into pieces.

   The miners used dynamite to shatter rocks.

   a high-pitched voice that could shatter glass

   The old oak tree has been shattered by lightning.

2. 2

   To destroy or disable something.

3. 3

   To smash, or break into tiny pieces.

4. 4

   To dispirit or emotionally defeat.

   to be shattered in intellect

   to have shattered hopes

   to have a shattered constitution

   a man of a loose, volatile, and shatter'd humour

5. 5

   Of seeds: to disperse (become dispersed) upon ripening.

   Harvesting is done much as with alfalfa, but alsike seed is small and shatters if it is not handled carefully.

6. 6

   obsoleteTo scatter about.

   Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

7. 7

   To fall sometimes connoting hard, as if to smash something, other times light and dispersed.

   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,[…]

noun

1. 1

   archaicA fragment of anything shattered.

   to break a glass into shatters

   it will fall upon the glass of the sconce, and break it into shatters

2. 2

   A (pine) needle.

   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 ..."

3. 3

   A scattering, a smattering; a quantity of something scattered, like a sprinkling of seeds or a shower of rain.

   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,[…]

4. 4

   slangA form of concentrated cannabis.

Forms

plural

shatters

past tense

shattered

past participle

shattered

present participle

shattering

third person singular

shatters