Shattered

How to spell shattered

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shattered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shattered mean?

1. verbBroke suddenly and violently into many pieces.
2. adjectiveCompletely worn out or extremely tired (chiefly British informal).

Shattered in a sentence

• verb

  The glass shattered the moment it hit the tiled floor.

• adjective

  After the double shift she felt utterly shattered.

• verb

  The blast shattered every window along the high street.

• adjective

  He came home from the marathon absolutely shattered.

Where does shattered come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past form of 'shatter', which appears in Middle English as 'schateren', meaning to dash or scatter abruptly. It is closely related to the word 'scatter', and both seem to descend from the same imitative root suggesting things flung apart; the two words were once near twins before their meanings drifted, 'scatter' toward spreading and 'shatter' toward breaking. The earliest English uses described dispersing or knocking something to bits, and by the time of writers such as Chaucer the violent breaking sense was well established. The spelling keeps the doubled 't' because the stressed short vowel in 'shatter' demands it, exactly as in 'scatter' and 'matter', which is the main thing a writer has to remember. The informal British sense meaning 'utterly exhausted' grew much later, picturing a person as if broken apart by tiredness.

How the word is built

• shatter (to break suddenly into pieces)
• -ed (past tense / participle ending)