Talk:shatter

Other dialectal senses

Some dictionaries of dialects say "shatter" can also be a noun meaning "smattering, sprinkling", or a verb meaning to rain (s)lightly, e.g. William Douglas Parish, William Francis Shaw, A Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms in Use in the County of Kent (1888), page 143, and Robert Eden George Cole, A Glossary of Words Used in South-west Lincolnshire (1886), page 143 (one a copy of the other??) both have:

• Shatter [shat-ur] (1) vb. To scatter; blow about; sprinkle. "Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year." — Milton, Lycidas, 5.
• Shatter [shat-ur] (2) sb. A sprinkling, generally of rain. "We've had quite a nice little shatter of rain." "There'll be a middlin' shatter of hops."
• Shatter (3) vb. To rain slightly.

However, I've only spotted uses of the verb that could just be poetic uses of a more usual sense:

• 1938, Hugh Walpole, The Joyful Delaneys: A Novel:

  For there was a flash that flung the grass, the trees, the sheep, into a frenzy of unreal light, then a peal of thunder that seemed to roar at themselves personally as though announcing to them some fearful news; then the rain, shattering down, ...

- -sche (discuss) 02:49, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Chambers 1908 also has a noun sense, "impaired state" (perhaps something like "my nerves are all in a shatter"?); I can't find it. Equinox ◑ 13:53, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

shatters ( plural noun)

shat·ters ( plural noun) fragments made by shattering something 
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 20:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Intransitive verb (U.S. agriculture): shed plant parts

intransitive verb (U.S. agriculture): to drop petals, ripe fruit, or leaves 
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)