Library / English Dictionary

SHRED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: shredded    , shredding   

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A small piece of cloth or paper

Synonyms:

rag; shred; tag; tag end; tatter

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("shred" is a kind of...):

piece of cloth; piece of material (a separate part consisting of fabric)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "shred"):

pine-tar rag (baseball equipment consisting of a rag soaked with pine tar; used on the handle of a baseball bat to give a batter a firm grip)

Derivation:

shred (tear into shreds)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A tiny or scarcely detectable amount

Synonyms:

iota; scintilla; shred; smidge; smidgen; smidgeon; smidgin; tittle; whit

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Hypernyms ("shred" is a kind of...):

small indefinite amount; small indefinite quantity (an indefinite quantity that is below average size or magnitude)

Derivation:

shred (tear into shreds)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tear into shreds

Synonyms:

rip up; shred; tear up

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "shred" is one way to...):

bust; rupture; snap; tear (separate or cause to separate abruptly)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "shred"):

tease (tear into pieces)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

shred (a small piece of cloth or paper)

shred (a tiny or scarcely detectable amount)

shredder (a device that shreds documents (usually in order to prevent the wrong people from reading them))

Credits

 Context examples: 

I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks'-nests drifted away upon the wind.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I saw the smoke banks on that October evening swirl slowly up over the Atlantic swell, and rise, and rise, until they had shredded into thinnest air, and lost themselves in the infinite blue of heaven.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At the foot of a pretty big pine and involved in a green creeper, which had even partly lifted some of the smaller bones, a human skeleton lay, with a few shreds of clothing, on the ground.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It seemed a glow to him, a warm and trailing vapor, ever beyond his reaching, though sometimes he was rewarded by catching at shreds of it and weaving them into phrases that echoed in his brain with haunting notes or drifted across his vision in misty wafture of unseen beauty.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The moccasins were in soggy shreds.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

A case of cartridges had been shattered into matchwood, and one of the brass shells lay shredded into pieces beside it.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And now after passing Holmesley Walk and the Wooton Heath, the forest began to shred out into scattered belts of trees, with gleam of corn-field and stretch of pasture-land between.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

On the table in the window were several shreds from a pencil which had been sharpened.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)