smashed

1. 1
   adjective

   Broken apart completely, often into many small pieces or shards.

   Crews swept up the smashed bottles scattered across the parking lot.

   The vase lay smashed on the tile, its fragments scattered everywhere.

   Similarbroken, destroyed, wrecked, shattered, busted

   Oppositeintact, whole, unbroken

   Note

   The verb's participle has settled into an adjective here, and degree is how you tell which one you have. A verb form does not take so or more, but this sense does. Pottery can be so smashed that repair is not feasible, and one wreck can be more smashed than another. Wrecked and destroyed are near neighbors, but smashed keeps the picture of a brittle thing lying in pieces.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of smash.

   Vandals smashed every streetlight along the avenue.

   The storm smashed the small boats against the rocks.

   Note

   A regular verb form, with one spelling for both the past (vandals smashed the lights) and the participle (the lights have been smashed). Because smash works with or without an object, you can say both "the waves smashed the boat" and "the boat smashed." After be, a named doer marks the verb: "was smashed by vandals." A bare state with no doer drifts toward the "in pieces" adjective.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Heavily drunk; strongly intoxicated by alcohol.

   By midnight half the guests were utterly smashed.

   He came home smashed after the office celebration.

   Similarhammered, wasted, blasted, wrecked, bombed

   Oppositesober

   Note

   A slang use that borrows its picture from the "broken to pieces" meaning: the drinker, like the pottery, is wrecked. That synonym serves both senses, and hammered belongs to the same violent family. It usually follows get or be and often takes an intensifier, as in Candice Carty-Williams's Queenie (2019): "He got so smashed that I had to take him home." Keep it for casual speech and dialogue. In formal writing, drunk is the safe choice.

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