shard
Americannoun
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shards
plural
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a fragment, especially of broken earthenware.
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Zoology.
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a scale.
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a shell, as of an egg or snail.
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Entomology. an elytron of a beetle.
noun
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a broken piece or fragment of a brittle substance, esp of pottery
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zoology a tough sheath, scale, or shell, esp the elytra of a beetle
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of shard
First recorded before 1000; Middle English; Old English sceard; cognate with Low German, Dutch schaard; akin to shear
Explanation
If you break a mirror, the thin sharp pieces you want to avoid are shards. A shard is simply a broken piece of metal, glass, stone, or pottery with sharp edges. Don't confuse shard with shred, meaning to cut into strips, or chard, a leafy green vegetable. You could use a shard of metal to shred chard into salad, but be careful that you don't cut your hands to shreds!
Vocabulary lists containing shard
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
An autopsy report on an Arizona man who died in a crash noted a large shard in his neck that had a DTN serial number inscribed on it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
A conservator uncovers the shard, which bears an intense blue figure of a skylark — evidence, at least to the reader, that Alouette’s recipe endured, and a symbol of how both she and Sasha escaped.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2026
She seemed to hold no mistrust toward me and my halting Spanish, no shard of suspicion that I could use to create the usual distance around myself.
From Slate ● Jan. 15, 2026
From his pocket, Serhiy Melnyk pulls out a small rusty shard, wrapped neatly in paper.
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2025
Pinmei threw Yishan a questioning glance, but he only reached down to grab a shard of broken stone and they both followed Lady Meng toward the river.
From "When the Sea Turned to Silver" by Grace Lin
He’s still getting to know the boulders, wooden pilings and shards of rusty metal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
According to a video shared Monday on Threads, a Parton fan who planned to lay flowers at the star found that it was marred by what seemed to be shards from a broken candle.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
Juan Felipe Giraldo, the 24-year-old buried amid the shards of a ruined hotel, is supposed to get married on Sunday.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Police were shooing everyone away from the high-rises as shards of glass were still falling out of broken windows.
From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026
The shards of glass fell on the stone floor in the silence.
From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
