shatter.
Of brittle solid materials (like glass or ice), to violently break into pieces.
Meaning & usage
Of brittle solid materials (like glass or ice), to violently break into pieces.
The miners used dynamite to shatter rocks.
a high-pitched voice that could shatter glass
To destroy, disable.
To dispirit or emotionally defeat.
to be shattered in intellect
to have shattered hopes
Of seeds: to disperse (become dispersed) upon ripening.
To scatter about.
To fall sometimes connoting hard, as if to smash something, other times light and dispersed.
Where this word comes from
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.
A fragment of anything shattered.
to break a glass into shatters
A (pine) needle.
A scattering, a smattering; a quantity of something scattered, like a sprinkling of seeds or a shower of rain.
A form of concentrated cannabis.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.