shatter
verb · noun
Simple meaning
Cause to break into many pieces.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shaterSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃætɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Cause to break into many pieces
transitive
To violently break something into pieces.
intransitive
To smash, or break into tiny pieces.
transitive
To destroy or disable something.
Damage or destroy
“The news of her husband's death shattered her life.”
intransitiveof rain
To fall sometimes connoting hard, as if to smash something, other times light and dispersed.
noun
A scattering, a smattering; a quantity of something scattered, like a sprinkling of seeds or a shower of rain.
A (pine) needle.
uncountableslang
A form of concentrated cannabis.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Cause to break into many pieces
In this sense, shatter is a very strong, expressive word and signals serious, lasting hurt rather than disappointment.
- Emotional tone
- Strongly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Strongly negative / painful
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
Shatter is emotionally heavy: it suggests deep or lasting feeling, not a passing mood, so it can overstate a small reaction.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use shatter
- “The news of her husband's death shattered her life.”verb
- “The wine glass shattered.”verb
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The act of breaking something into small pieces.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Glass made with plates of plastic or resin or other material between two sheets of glass to prevent shattering.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.