Potsherd

//ˈpɒt.ʃɜːd// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A piece of ceramic from pottery, often found on an archaeological site. often

    "But this madde Amalecke, / Lyke to a Mamelek, / He regardeth lordes / No more than potshordes; […]"

  2. 2
    a shard of pottery wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
shardsherd

Example

More examples

"But this madde Amalecke, / Lyke to a Mamelek, / He regardeth lordes / No more than potshordes; […]"

Etymology

From Middle English pot-sherd, pot-schord, pot scherd, pot scarth, from Middle English pot, pote, potte (“a container, pot, vessel; especially an earthenware vessel”) (from late Old English pot, pott (“a pot”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *budn- (“a type of vessel”)) + Middle English sherd (“piece of fired clay or broken earthenware; potsherd”) (from Old English sceard (“a shard, sherd”), from Proto-Germanic *skardą (“a nick, notch”)); equivalent to pot + sherd (“shard”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.