different between slice vs shard

English

Etymology

From Middle English slice, esclice, from Old French esclice, esclis (“a piece split off”), deverbal of esclicer, esclicier (“to splinter, split up”), from Frankish *slitjan (“to split up”), from Proto-Germanic *slitjan?, from Proto-Germanic *sl?tan? (“to split, tear apart”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleyd- (“to rend, injure, crumble”). Akin to Old High German sliz, gisliz (“a tear, rip”), Old High German sl?zan (“to tear”), Old English sl?tan (“to split up”). More at slite, slit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sla?s/
• Rhymes: -a?s

Noun

slice (plural slices)

1. That which is thin and broad.
2. A thin, broad piece cut off.

   a slice of bacon; a slice of cheese; a slice of bread

3. (colloquial) An amount of anything.
4. A piece of pizza.
   • 2010, Andrea Renzoni, ?Eric Renzoni, Fuhgeddaboudit! (page 22)

     For breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the best Guido meal is a slice and a Coke.

5. (Britain) A snack consisting of pastry with savoury filling.

   I bought a ham and cheese slice at the service station.

6. A broad, thin piece of plaster.
7. A knife with a thin, broad blade for taking up or serving fish; also, a spatula for spreading anything, as paint or ink.
8. A salver, platter, or tray.
9. A plate of iron with a handle, forming a kind of chisel, or a spadelike implement, variously proportioned, and used for various purposes, as for stripping the planking from a vessel's side, for cutting blubber from a whale, or for stirring a fire of coals; a slice bar; a peel; a fire shovel.
10. One of the wedges by which the cradle and the ship are lifted clear of the building blocks to prepare for launching.
11. (printing) A removable sliding bottom to a galley.
12. (golf) A shot that (for the right-handed player) curves unintentionally to the right. See fade, hook, draw
13. (Australia, New Zealand, Britain) Any of a class of heavy cakes or desserts made in a tray and cut out into squarish slices.
14. (medicine) A section of image taken of an internal organ using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CT (computed tomography), or various forms of x-ray.
15. (falconry) A hawk's or falcon's dropping which squirts at an angle other than vertical. (See mute.)
16. (programming) A contiguous portion of an array.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

slice (third-person singular simple present slices, present participle slicing, simple past and past participle sliced)

1. (transitive) To cut into slices.

2. (transitive) To cut with an edge utilizing a drawing motion.

3. (transitive) To clear (e.g. a fire, or the grate bars of a furnace) by means of a slice bar.
4. (transitive, badminton) To hit the shuttlecock with the racket at an angle, causing it to move sideways and downwards.
5. (transitive, golf) To hit a shot that slices (travels from left to right for a right-handed player).
6. (transitive, rowing) To angle the blade so that it goes too deeply into the water when starting to take a stroke.
7. (transitive, soccer) To kick the ball so that it goes in an unintended direction, at too great an angle or too high.
8. (transitive, tennis) To hit the ball with a stroke that causes a spin, resulting in the ball swerving or staying low after a bounce.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

slice (not comparable)

1. (mathematics) Having the properties of a slice knot.

Further reading

• slice on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Anagrams

• -sicle, Celis, ILECs, Leics, Sicel, ceils, ciels, clies, sicle

French

Pronunciation

Verb

slice

1. first-person singular present indicative of slicer
2. third-person singular present indicative of slicer
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of slicer
4. third-person singular present subjunctive of slicer
5. second-person singular imperative of slicer

Old Irish

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *sleggio, from *sleg, from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, strike, throw”). See also Ancient Greek ?????? (lakíz?, “to tear apart”).

Noun

slice m (nominative plural slici)

1. shell

Inflection

Derived terms

• slicén

Descendants

• Irish: slige
• Manx: shlig
• Scottish Gaelic: slige

References

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