Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

shard

/ˈʃɐːd/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.00 in modern English

Syllables
shard
IPA
/ˈʃɐːd/
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A food preparation similar in shape to a shard of, e.g., glass, generally made from a sheet of a hard product that is then shattered to produce smaller pieces.

noun

A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.

noun

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.

noun

A piece of crystal methamphetamine.

Slang

verb

To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.

Intransitive verb

Example Sentences

Etymology

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.

Origin

Word Breakdown

  • Root: shard, sċeard, *skard, *skardą, *(s)ker-

Regional Pronunciation

  • American English: /ˈʃɐːd/
  • British English: /ˈʃɑːd/

Usage

Inflected Forms

Derived Forms

Synonyms

Rhymes With

Questions

How do you pronounce shard?
The recorded pronunciation is /ˈʃɐːd/.
What does shard mean?
A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
Where does shard come from?
It is traced to Middle English.

How to pronounce shard

  1. Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “shard”.
  2. Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ˈʃɐːd/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
  3. Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “shard”.
  4. Repeat and practice — Say “shard” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.