shatter

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   break into many pieces

   The wine glass shattered

2. 2
   verb

   cause to break into many pieces

   shatter the plate

3. 3
   verb

   damage or destroy

   The news of their loved one's death shattered their lives.

4. 4
   verb

   To violently break something into pieces.

   The miners used dynamite to shatter rocks.

5. 5
   verb

   To dispirit or emotionally defeat.

   to be shattered in intellect

6. 6
   verb

   Of seeds: to disperse (become dispersed) upon ripening.

   Harvesting is done much as with alfalfa, but alsike seed is small and shatters if it is not handled carefully.

7. 7
   verb

   To scatter about.

   Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

8. 8
   verb

   To fall sometimes connoting hard, as if to smash something, other times light and dispersed.

   Bulletlike rain shattered down. Instantly, Willy was soaked to the skin. Then her right foot skidded out before her, and she felt her balance begin to go. Inevitably and with shocking swiftness came the moment when her body obeyed gravity[…]

Etymology

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.