Shard (also sherd or potsherd), a term for broken pieces of pottery or glass, often used in archaeology. In contemporary use, it often implies a sharp fragment, especially of glass.
shard, in zoology refers to a tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially used as a term to refer to the elytra of a beetle.
SHARD, an acronym for South Hams Against Rural Destruction, a local environmental action group from South Hams, Devon, United Kingdom, active since approximately 1998.
A Single Shard, children's novel by Linda Sue Park, set in 12th-century Korea, 2002 Newbery Medal winner
Rex Shard, a convicted murderer in the animated television series SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron
shard, an instance of a world, realm, or playground in some massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) or in a multiplayer computer role-playing game-style server.
In MMOGs, the term shard is often associated with Ultima Online, Neverwinter Nights, and Silkroad Online.
Other MMOGs call them servers or Realms (World of Warcraft) instead, although their function is still basically the same.
The usage originated with the Ultima Online story, where each of the game's servers were said to be different images of the world, trapped in the shattered shards of a mystic gem.
Six games known for using unsharded servers are Mankind (MMORTS), EVE Online, PlanetSide, A Tale in the Desert, Entropia Universe and Anarchy Online where there is no sharding or instancing and everything happens in the same persistent online world. Second Life, which is a user-content generated world, uses servers called "sims" seamlessly connected to each other in a "grid" to create one persistent world.
The Shard of Lightning, 16th episode of animated television series Xiaolin Showdown created by Christy Hui
Ultima Online shard emulation, fans of Ultima Online have reverse-engineered the game to produce server emulators of the original Electronic Arts servers
Shard End Lake, a man-made lake in the Shard End area of Birmingham
Shard London Bridge, a pyramidal skyscraper planned for London, which, if built, might become the tallest building in Britain.
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