shard
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
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[1] or from SHARD (System for Highly Available Replicated Data), name of a 1980s database product.
Alternative forms
Noun
shard (plural shards)
- A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
- Synonym: potsherd
- 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 29:
- You know there is something fascinating beyond that wall because someone's tried to stop you seeing over, and there are shards of glass embedded in the top.
- (by extension) A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.
- Synonym: splinter
- 2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)
- Inside its exhibit hall, behind panes of glass, in a white-lit lab, a team of restorers works on an ancient Byzantine floor: 44 square yards of stone shards rescued from Lot’s Cave Monastery.
- A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
- (online gaming) 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.
- 1997, Ultima Online. The term "shard" is related to the backstory of the game, in which the Gem of Immortality is shattered by the Stranger, the protagonist of Ultima I.
- "The planet was still bound to the jewel's magic, even as it lay shattered upon the floor of Mondain's castle. For,[sic] within each shattered remnant of the jewel, dwelled a perfect likeness of Sosaria. Thus is the world in which you are born, live, and die. Brittania[sic], that was once Sosaria, now exists as a thousand worlds, each with its own peoples, history and destiny. This Brittania[sic] is but one of many in the multiverse that is... ...ULTIMA ONLINE." - Intro cinematic to the game, written by Michael Morlan
- 1997, Ultima Online. The term "shard" is related to the backstory of the game, in which the Gem of Immortality is shattered by the Stranger, the protagonist of Ultima I.
- (databases) A component of a sharded distributed database.
- Synonym: partition
- (slang, in the singular or in the plural) A piece of crystal methamphetamine.
Derived terms
Translations
piece of glass or pottery
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Verb
shard (third-person singular simple present shards, present participle sharding, simple past and past participle sharded)
- (intransitive) To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
- (transitive) To break (something) into shards.
- (online gaming, transitive) To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.
Translations
to fall apart
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to break
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References
- Raph Koster (2009 January 18) “Database “sharding” came from UO?”, in Raph Koster's Website: “So, did this database term come from a doc that I dashed off one afternoon in 1996? Umm… I am not sure. Seems like an interesting coincidence, if not.”
- (pottery) Shard, in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.
Etymology 2
Noun
shard (uncountable)
- The plant chard.
- 1684, John Dryden, “From Horace, Epode 2”, in The Second Part of Miscellany Poems, 4th edition, London: Jacob Tonson, page 79:
- Not Heathpout, or the rarer Bird,
Which Phasis, or Ionia yields,
More pleasing Morsels would afford
Than the fat Olives of my Fields;
Than Shards or Mallows for the Pot,
That keep the loosen’d Body sound,
Or than the Lamb that falls by Lot,
To the just Guardian of my Ground.
Anagrams
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