sherd

Meanings

1. 1nouncountablespecialist

   A broken piece of pottery, especially an ancient one dug up by archaeologists and used to study how people lived.

   Grammar: Usually written in the plural when describing a find: sherds were scattered across the site.

   Patterns

   • a sherd of something
   • sherds from somewhere

   The students washed each sherd and labeled it by trench number.

   A single painted sherd revealed that the village traded with the coast.

   Hundreds of sherds lay under the old threshing floor.

2. 2nouncountablerare

   A broken fragment of glass or other brittle material, in a looser, older use that overlaps with shard.

   Grammar: Less common than shard for glass; the spelling sherd is mainly kept for pottery.

   Patterns

   • a sherd of glass

   She found a sherd of green glass in the garden soil.

   The museum displayed a sherd of a Roman bowl beside the whole vessel.

Word forms

Common combinations

pottery sherd

Each pottery sherd was photographed before it was bagged.

painted sherd

The painted sherd still showed traces of blue glaze.

sherd collection

The university keeps a large sherd collection for teaching.

sherds of pottery

Sherds of pottery littered the ploughed field.

unearth a sherd

The volunteer unearthed a sherd on her first morning.

Synonyms and how they differ

shard

Shard is the everyday word for any sharp broken piece, while sherd is the specialist spelling used mostly for pottery in archaeology.

fragment

Fragment is a general word for any broken part and gives no hint that the object was pottery.

potsherd

Potsherd means exactly a piece of broken pot, so it is more specific than sherd.

Word family

potsherd noun

a piece of broken pot

shard noun

a variant of the same old word for a broken piece

sherds noun

plural form

Commonly confused: sherd or shard? sherd or shirt?

Practice

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