shard

Meaning

Noun

1. A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
2. (broadly) 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. (Internet) 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.
5. A component of a sharded distributed database.
6. (in-plural, singular, slang) A piece of crystal methamphetamine.

Verb

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

Synonyms

fragment

splinter

sherd

sliver

chip

bit

piece

potsherd

smithereens

spall

broken piece

rasura

beat

fragmentary grain

flinder

scrap

shatter

shell

🐚

shive

shred

small

Translations

morceau

Scherbe

tesson

caco

casco

éclat

Splitter

fragmento

fragment

coccio

estilhaço

fragmento

frammento

scherf

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ʃaːd/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: shard

Inherited from Old English: sċeard

Cognate with Scots: schaird

Cognate with French: écharde

Cognate with Dutch: schaarde

Cognate with German: Scharte

Cognate with Old Norse: skarð

Cognate with Danish: skår

In summary

From Middle English shard, scherd, scheard, schord, from Old English sċeard (“a broken piece; shard”), from Proto-West Germanic *skard, from Proto-Germanic *skardą (“notch; nick”), from *skardaz (“damaged; nicked; scarred”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”). Akin to Scots schaird (“shard”), French écharde (“splinter”), Dutch schaarde (“tear; notch; fragment”), German Scharte (“notch”), Old Norse skarð (“notch, hack”) ( > Danish skår).
The database sense is perhaps derived from the online gaming sense or from SHARD (System for Highly Available Replicated Data), name of a 1980s database product.