shred

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ʃɹɛd/
• Rhymes: -ɛd

From Middle English shrede, shred, from Old English scrēad, scrēade, from Proto-Germanic *skraudō (“a cut, shred”). Doublet of escrow.

shred (plural shreds)

1. A long, narrow piece cut or torn off; a strip.
   • Francis Bacon

     shreds of tanned leather

2. In general, a fragment; a piece; a particle; a very small amount.

   There isn't a shred of evidence to support his claims.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

• See also Thesaurus:modicum.

• screed

From Middle English shreden, from Old English scrēadian, from Proto-Germanic *skraudaną (“to cut up, shred”).

shred (third-person singular simple present shreds, present participle shredding, simple past shredded, past participle shredded or shred)

1. To cut or tear into narrow and long pieces or strips.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Chaucer to this entry?)

   • 1902, William Carew Hazlitt, Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine:

     Take a little grated bread, some beef-suet, yolks of hard eggs, three anchovies, a bit of an onion, salt and pepper, thyme and winter-savoury, twelve oysters, some nutmeg grated; mix all these together, and shred them very fine, and work them up with raw eggs like a paste, ...

2. (obsolete, transitive) To lop; to prune; to trim.
3. (snowboarding) To ride aggressively.
4. (bodybuilding) To drop fat and water weight before a competition.
5. (music, slang) To play very fast (especially guitar solos in rock and metal genres).

• shredder

• shred in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• shred in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• herds, sherd