Crossword clues for shattering
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shatter \Shat"ter\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Shattered; p. pr. & vb. n. Shattering.] [OE. schateren, scateren, to scatter, to dash, AS. scateran; cf. D. schateren to crack, to make a great noise, OD. schetteren to scatter, to burst, to crack. Cf. Scatter.]
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To break at once into many pieces; to dash, burst, or part violently into fragments; to rend into splinters; as, an explosion shatters a rock or a bomb; too much steam shatters a boiler; an oak is shattered by lightning.
A monarchy was shattered to pieces, and divided amongst revolted subjects.
--Locke. -
To disorder; to derange; to render unsound; as, to be shattered in intellect; his constitution was shattered; his hopes were shattered.
A man of a loose, volatile, and shattered humor.
--Norris. -
To scatter about. [Obs.]
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
--Milton.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1560s, present participle adjective from shatter (v.). Related: Shatteringly.
Wiktionary
n. The act of something that shatters. vb. (present participle of shatter English)
WordNet
adj. seemingly loud enough to break something; violently rattling or clattering; "shattering rain striking the windowpanes"; "the shattering tones of the enormous carillon"; "the shattering peal of artillery"
n. the act of breaking something into small pieces [syn: smashing]
Wikipedia
In agriculture, shattering is the dispersal of a crop's seeds upon their becoming ripe. From an agricultural perspective this is generally an undesirable process, and in the history of crop domestication several important advances have involved a mutation in a crop plant that reduced shattering — instead of the seeds being dispersed as soon as they were ripe, the mutant plants retained the seeds for longer, which made harvesting much more effective.
A particularly important mutation that was selected very early in the history of agriculture removed the "brittle rachis" problem from wheat. A ripe head ("ear") of wild-type wheat is easily shattered into dispersal units when touched, or blown by the wind, because during ripening a series of abscission layers forms that divides the rachis into short segments, each attached to a single spikelet (which contains 2–3 grains along with chaff).
A different class of shattering mechanisms involves dehiscence of the mature fruit, which releases the seeds.
Current research priorities to understand the genetics of shattering include the following crops:
- Barley
- Buckwheat
- Grain Amaranth
- Oilseed rape ( Brassica napus)
Sesame and canola are harvested before the seed is fully mature, so that the pods do not split and drop the seeds.
Usage examples of "shattering".
Cars jumped as the barrage of 1 mm needles punched through chassis and engine, every window along the entire street shattering under the arrival of the deadly depleted-uranium, hollow-point slivers.
The shattering thrusts of the massive battering ram continued to sake the great wall as Balinor and Durin faced each other across the little room.
Tatooine and Hoth and Bespin through his mind, he strode into the midst of the fight, the blue-white blade spattering bolts of enemy fire and shattering across the weapons themselves.
He opened the balcony doors and stepped outside, bracing himself against the outer wall as the shattering breeze blew through again, freezing his face and hands.
Rummy emptied one of his guns firing at Lo Manto, bullets cascading around the fleeing cop, shattering glass, setting off car alarms, whizzing past him at all angles, one near-miss taking out the rear tire of a parked van.
Black Bolt to open his mouth and bring it all crumbling down, with one shattering doomsday utterance: the bridge, the towers, the schools, all the public concrete Mono and Lee and Dose had tagged with spray paint for future demolition.
Beneath her practiced fingers, a complex polychromed pot was slowly regaining its shape, like a bottle whose shattering was being filmed in reverse.
It can punch through half a metre of solid prestressed concrete without shattering until it hits something soft.
It had started existence as part of a glacierlike ice moon of the protoplanet Uranus, shattering, melting, and recrystallizing in the primeval eons of relentless bombardment.
They lit a joint and drove away, Shaggy blaring out of the quadrophonic sound system and shattering the peace of the desirable neighbourhood.
The blast rattled windows, and the slug tore through a cabinet door along the nearest wall, spraying splinters of pine and shattering dishes inside.
Perhaps he blamed her as the bearer of ill tidings, resenting her for shattering his dreams.
Eventually the stalactites stopped falling, and the echoes of their shattering died away.
A moment later he was through it and striding away, listening to the shattering of expensive glass and china as the weeping princess hurled perfume bottle after cordial decanter at the closed door.
All he could hear was the loud ringing in his ears, but he could see pieces of brick and roof tile thudding into the lawn at his right and shattering on the suddenly smoke-fogged sidewalk, and his nose stung with a sharp chemical tang like ozone.