different between blob vs shard

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bl?b/

  Rhymes: -?b

• (US) IPA^(key): /bl?b/
• Homophone: BLOB

Etymology 1

Possibly formed through mimesis, similarly to bleb and blubber.

Noun

blob (plural blobs)

1. A shapeless or amorphous mass; a vague shape or amount, especially of a liquid or semisolid substance; a clump, group or collection that lacks definite shape.
   • 1869: Norman Lockyer et al, Nature

     Only the outermost blob on either side in map 2 displays misalignment.

   • 1895: The Annual of the British School at Athens

     It was a colourful vase with red and white hoops on the lid, and red bands above and below the main frieze. These bands also carry a metope pattern in white of triple lines and blobs, which can just be distinguished on the photographs.
2. (astronomy) A large cloud of gas.
   1. Ellipsis of extended Lyman-Alpha blob (a huge body of gas that may be the precursor to a galaxy).
3. (dialect) A bubble; a bleb.
4. A small freshwater fish (Cottus bairdii); the miller's thumb.
5. The partially inflated air bag used in the sport of blobbing.
6. (sports, slang) A score of zero.
   • 1925, Punch (volume 168, page 561)

     A gentleman named W. Shakespeare scored a blob in the Worcestershire v. Lancashire match. We understand that he got out because the ball pitched on a "damned spot."

Derived terms

• bloblike
• blobby

Translations

See also

• cluster

Verb

blob (third-person singular simple present blobs, present participle blobbing, simple past and past participle blobbed)

1. (transitive) To drop in the form of a blob or blobs
   • 1957, "War of Nerves," Time, 7 October, 1957, [3]

     […] a cross has been burned during the night on Wechsler's lawn and a painted KKK blobbed across one wall of his home.

2. (transitive) To drop a blob or blobs onto, cover with blobs.
   • 1959, "The Big Appel," Time, 7 December, 1959, [5]

     Asked to do a mural in the coffee room of the Municipal Museum, Appel responded by blobbing all four walls and the ceiling with brilliant colors […]

3. (intransitive) To fall in the form of a blob or blobs.
   • 1964, A. S. Byatt, The Shadow of the Sun, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1991, Chapter Three, p. 47,

     Caroline began to separate eggs, cracking them into unbelievably even halves, sliding the gold, round and elastic, from shell to shell, whilst the white hung, heavy, translucent, in thick sheets, and blobbed suddenly into her basin.

   • 2013, Marcus Berkmann, "Blood and gore of the real 'who dunnits'," Review of Silent Witnesses by Nigel McCrery, Daily Mail, 22 August, 2013, [6]

     […] whether the blood has splashed, or blobbed, or trickled, can reveal whether the victim was killed here or moved afterwards.

4. (intransitive, slang) To relax idly and mindlessly; to veg out.

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

blob (plural blobs)

1. Alternative spelling of BLOB

References

Anagrams

• Lobb

English

Pronunciation

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /?a?d/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /???d/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???d/
• Rhymes: -??(?)d

Etymology 1

From Middle English shard, scherd, scheard, schord, from Old English s?eard (“a broken piece; shard”), from Proto-Germanic *skard? (“notch; nick”), from *skardaz (“damaged; nicked; scarred”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”). Akin to Scots schaird (“shard”), French écharde (“splinter”), Dutch schaarde (“tear; notch; fragment”), German Scharte (“notch”), Old Norse skarð (“notch, hack”) ( > Danish skår).

The database sense is perhaps derived from the online gaming sense or from SHARD (System for Highly Available Replicated Data), name of a 1980s database product.

Alternative forms

• sherd

Noun

shard (plural shards)

1. A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.

   Synonym: potsherd
2. (by extension) A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.

   Synonym: splinter

   • 2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)[2]

     Inside its exhibit hall, behind panes of glass, in a white-lit lab, a team of restorers works on an ancient Byzantine floor: 44 square yards of stone shards rescued from Lot’s Cave Monastery.

3. A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
4. (online gaming) An instance of an MMORPG that is one of several independent and structurally identical virtual worlds, none of which has so many players as to exhaust a system's resources.
   • 1997, Ultima Online. The term "shard" is related to the backstory of the game, in which the Gem of Immortality is shattered by the Stranger, the protagonist of Ultima I.

     "The planet was still bound to the jewel's magic, even as it lay shattered upon the floor of Mondain's castle. For,^[sic] within each shattered remnant of the jewel, dwelled a perfect likeness of Sosaria. Thus is the world in which you are born, live, and die. Brittania^[sic], that was once Sosaria, now exists as a thousand worlds, each with its own peoples, history and destiny. This Brittania^[sic] is but one of many in the multiverse that is... ...ULTIMA ONLINE." - Intro cinematic to the game, written by Michael Morlan [3]

5. (databases) A component of a sharded distributed database.

   Synonym: partition

6. (slang, in the singular or in the plural) A piece of crystal methamphetamine.

Derived terms

• potsherd

Translations

Verb

shard (third-person singular simple present shards, present participle sharding, simple past and past participle sharded)

1. (intransitive) To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
2. (transitive) To break (something) into shards.
3. (online gaming, transitive) To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.

Translations

References

• (pottery) Shard, in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.

Etymology 2

Noun

shard (uncountable)

1. The plant chard.
   • 1684, John Dryden, “From Horace, Epode 2” in The Second Part of Miscellany Poems, London: Jacob Tonson, 4th edition, p. 79,^[4]

     Not Heathpout, or the rarer Bird,

     Which Phasis, or Ionia yields,

     More pleasing Morsels would afford

     Than the fat Olives of my Fields;

     Than Shards or Mallows for the Pot,

     That keep the loosen’d Body sound,

     Or than the Lamb that falls by Lot,

     To the just Guardian of my Ground.

Anagrams

• Dhars, Hards, hards

Middle English

Noun

shard

1. Alternative form of scherd