noun

• (by extension) A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery.
  "2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)https://web.archive.org/web/20150212214621/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/pilgrim-roads/salopek-text Inside its exhibit hall, behind panes of glass, in a white-lit lab, a team of restorers works on an ancient Byzantine floor: 44 square yards of stone shards rescued from Lot’s Cave Monastery."
• (online gaming) 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.
  "1997, Ultima Online. The term "shard" is related to the backstory of the game, in which the Gem of Immortality is shattered by the Stranger, the protagonist of Ultima I. "The planet was still bound to the jewel's magic, even as it lay shattered upon the floor of Mondain's castle. For, within each shattered remnant of the jewel, dwelled a perfect likeness of Sosaria. Thus is the world in which you are born, live, and die. Brittania, that was once Sosaria, now exists as a thousand worlds, each with its own peoples, history and destiny. This Brittania is but one of many in the multiverse that is... ...ULTIMA ONLINE." - Intro cinematic to the game, written by Michael Morlan https://web.archive.org/web/20080706122926/http://michael-morlan.net/pages/production/prod_uo.htm"
• (databases) A component of a sharded distributed database.
• (slang, in the singular or in the plural) A piece of crystal methamphetamine.

verb

• (intransitive) To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion.
• (transitive) To break (something) into shards.
• (online gaming, transitive) To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one.