shattering

Pluralshatterings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of shatter.

   The windows were shattering under the force of the blast.

   Ice was shattering across the lake as the heavy truck rolled over it.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb, and that verb runs both ways. Transitively something does the breaking (the blast was shattering the windows). Intransitively the thing breaks by itself (the windows were shattering). The same split holds for seeds shattering as they ripen and for news shattering a family. Once it takes more and most, it has become the "exhausting" adjective.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of breaking violently into fragments, or the broken material produced when something breaks apart.

   The shattering of the ice could be heard across the entire valley.

   Crews cleared the shattering from the road after the collision.

   Similarbreaking, smashing, debris, wreckage

   Note

   A noun that can be both a mass and a count: the shattering of the ice names a single event, but each breakage can also be counted on its own. J. Wright's Realism and Explanatory Priority (1997) speaks of "all the shatterings" produced by repeated droppings of glass. The plural is natural when the breakages are separate, comparable events rather than one continuous breaking.

3. 3
   adjective

   Extremely tiring; demanding so much energy that it leaves a person drained.

   The relentless travel schedule proved utterly shattering by the end of the tour.

   She described the back-to-back deadlines as the most shattering week of her career.

   Similarexhausting, draining, grueling, tiring

   Oppositerelaxing, restful, refreshing

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