Crossword clues for sherd
sherd
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shard \Shard\ (sh[aum]rd), n. [AS. sceard, properly a p. p. from the root of scearn to shear, to cut; akin to D. schaard a fragment, G. scharte a notch, Icel. skar[eth]. See Shear, and cf. Sherd.] [Written also sheard, and sherd.]
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A piece or fragment of an earthen vessel, or a like brittle substance, as the shell of an egg or snail.
--Shak.The precious dish Broke into shards of beauty on the board.
--E. Arnold. -
(Zo["o]l.) The hard wing case of a beetle.
They are his shards, and he their beetle.
--Shak. A gap in a fence. [Obs.]
--Stanyhurst.A boundary; a division. [Obs. & R.]
--Spenser.
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of shard English)
WordNet
Wikipedia
In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels as well.
Occasionally, a piece of broken pottery may be referred to as a shard. While the spelling shard is generally reserved for referring to fragments of glass vessels, the term does not exclude pottery fragments. The etymology is connected with the idea of breakage, from Old English sceard, related to Old Norse skarth, "notch", and Middle High German scharte, "notch".
A sherd or potsherd that has been used by having writing painted or inscribed on it can be more precisely referred to as an ostracon.
The analysis of sherds is widely used by archaeologists to date sites and develop chronologies, due to their diagnostic characteristics and high resistance to natural, destructive processes. Some characteristics of sherds useful to archaeologists include temper, form, and glaze. These characteristics can be used to determine the kinds of resources and technologies used at the site.
Usage examples of "sherd".
Lang-- Published by Longmans--Letters about it--The Sherd of Amenartas.
Longmans and very well got up, the elaborate sherd compounded by my sister-in-law, then Miss Barber, and myself being reproduced in two plates at the beginning of the volume.
By the way, the reproduction of this sherd was shown as being from a genuine antique to Mr.
I consider great testimony to the excellency of the sherd, which now reposes in a cupboard upstairs.
She had collected the sherds during a summertime expedition to the Four Corners area of the Southwest, and now she had arranged them on a huge contour map of the Four Corners, each sherd in the precise geographical location where it had been found.
She began laying the sherds out on the map, filling in its last blank corner, double-checking the accession number on each sherd as she placed it.
I glanced at it for a moment, and thought about how an archaeologist moves from a tiny sherd of one cup, something that may be part of an entire set, to thinking about how a person incorporated that item into everyday rituals, fraught with meaning.
Jeremy had found his sherd collectionand ran up to a garage that had once upon a time been a stable.
I let her handle the sherd of the day, a nice piece of eighteenth-century Rhenish stoneware with dark blue and purple glaze.
Come then, reverend fathers, deign to recall your fathers and devote yourselves more faithfully to the study of holy books, without which all religion will stagger, without which the virtue of devotion will dry up like a sherd, and without which ye can afford no light to the world.
He picked up a sherd which was set out in a place of honour, and passed it to Louren.
There was a sherd of moon partway up the eastern sky, and the stars all stood in their expected places and looked chill and brittle.
Holly brought him hither, or he brought Holly, because of an ancient, lying screed that Amenartas wrote upon a sherd, which from age to age had passed down in his race, urging some descendant of her blood to find me out and slay me, for this Egyptian fool thought that I could be slain.
For kiln-fired pottery, which first appears in the fifth millennium BC in the Near East, combined TL-OSL can date a sherd to within a few hundred years if the conditions are right.
Another was a little street urchin who had found some sherds in a dustbin, but was in too dazed a state to remember exactly where.