shatter

name

1. A surname.

noun

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.

1. A 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. 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.”

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. A form of concentrated cannabis.

verb

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.

1. To violently break something into pieces.

   “The miners used dynamite to shatter rocks.”

   “a high-pitched voice that could shatter glass”

2. To destroy or disable something.
3. To smash, or break into tiny pieces.
4. To dispirit or emotionally defeat.

   “to be shattered in intellect”

   “to have shattered hopes”

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. To scatter about.

   “Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.”

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.”