Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Fragments from an exploded artillery shell, mine, or bomb.
- n. A 19th-century artillery shell containing metal balls, designed to explode in the air above enemy troops.
- n. The metal balls in such a weapon.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A shell filled with bullets and a small bursting-charge just sufficient to split it open and release the bullets at any given point, generally about 80 yards before reaching the object aimed at. After the explosion of the shell, the bullets and fragments fly onward in a shower.
Wiktionary
- n. a collective term for shot, fragments, or debris thrown out by an exploding shell or landmine
- n. loose change
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Applied as an appellation to a kind of shell invented by Gen. H.
Shrapnel of the British army.
WordNet 3.0
- n. shell containing lead pellets that explodes in flight
Etymologies
- After Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842), British army officer.
Examples
“Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 not from a rifle bullet, and put a small bandage on Kerry's arm.”
“But his injuries, which she described as shrapnel damage to the head, hand and foot, were more serious than he realized.”
“Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, McCauley had told his family about his special-operations ground raids in Afghanistan and of being struck by shrapnel from a "frag grenade" while in a ground conflict.”
“Justin wasn't allowed to tell them, for instance, that he'd been dinged by shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade that inexplicably went off 50 or 60 feet away from him.”
“She said he told her that he pulled shrapnel from a wound on his abdomen after a grenade attack in”
“The armored car is said to have been hit by shrapnel from the explosion.”
Voice of America: Assailants in Yemen Attack British Diplomats, Frenchman
“He turned to look at the remains of his craft, floating amidst the wrecked and half eaten cargo containers and shrapnel from the shuttle.”
365 tomorrows » 2008 » June : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“While in Iraq, Solorio had been shot once in the head by a sniper and hit in the hand by shrapnel from a roadside bomb.”
“It'll be some guy from Southie takin 'shrapnel in the ass.”
“The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shrapnel’.
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Gifts I do not wish to receive
single glove, single sock, rubber chainsaw, subscription to i..., submarine screen ..., rubber chicken soup, swine flu, burnt offering, stage whisper, stone treadmill, 22-volume paperba..., tortoiseshell win... and 61 more...
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charcoal's list
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traps
landmine, concussive, shrapnel, fragments, petard, explosive device
hernesheir Nothing good ever came of fake snow, I always say. Sep 15, 2011
bilby A non-military usage of shrapnel:
"A man has been rushed to hospital with metal stuck in his neck after snow-making equipment shattered in Falls Creek. The 30-year-old man was injured about 4am when a pipe on the snow-making equipment shattered and he was hit with shrapnel."
- Nino Bucci, Snow shrapnel shock for Falls Creek worker , theage.com.au, 15 Sep 2011.
Sep 15, 2011
bilby "It was Stanford, the cafe' owner. Like me he was a veteran of the Crimea, but from an earlier campaign. Unlike me he had lost more than just his innocence and some good friends; he lumbered around on two tin legs and still had enough shrapnel in his body to make half a dozen baked bean tins."
- Jasper Fforde, 'The Eyre Affair'. Oct 26, 2008