shattered

Meanings

1. 1adjectivenot comparable

   Broken suddenly and violently into many small pieces.

   Grammar: Describes physical things like glass; it does not take more or most.

   Patterns

   • shattered glass
   • lie in shattered pieces
   • shattered dreams

   Shattered glass covered the road after the accident.

   The mirror slipped from his hands and was left in shattered pieces on the tiles.

2. 2adjectivenot comparableinformalBritish

   Extremely tired and completely without energy.

   Grammar: In this sense it usually comes after a verb: I was shattered, not a shattered person.

   Patterns

   • absolutely shattered
   • feel shattered
   • shattered after something

   After the double shift I was absolutely shattered.

   The kids were shattered after the long journey and fell asleep at once.

Common combinations

shattered glass

The windshield ended up covered in shattered glass.

shattered dreams

Years of war turned their hopes into shattered dreams.

absolutely shattered

I'm absolutely shattered after that workout.

Synonyms and how they differ

exhausted

Neutral and used everywhere; exhausted works in formal writing, while shattered is informal British English.

drained

Suggests energy or emotion used up; drained fits tiredness, but shattered also implies total physical weariness.

devastated

Means emotionally destroyed; it does not describe physical breakage like shattered glass.

Opposites

Word family

shatter verb

to break suddenly into many pieces, or to destroy hopes completely

Commonly confused: shattered or shuttered?

Practice

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Write a sentence using “shattered”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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