shard

Short definition from Wiktionary

Noun

1. 1
   A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig.
2. 2
   A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.
3. 3
   A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle.
4. 4
   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.
5. 5
   A component of a sharded distributed database.
6. 6
   A piece of crystal methamphetamine.
7. 7
   The plant chard.

Verb

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