Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A sharp, slender piece, as of wood, bone, glass, or metal, split or broken off from a main body.
  • noun A splinter group.
  • intransitive verb To split or break into sharp, slender pieces; form splinters.
  • intransitive verb To cause to splinter. synonym: break.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To split or rend into long thin pieces; shiver.
  • To support by a splint, as a broken limb; splint.
  • To be split or rent into long pieces; shiver.
  • noun A sharp-edged fragment of anything split or shivered off more or less in the direction of its length; a thin piece (in proportion to its length) of wood or other solid substance rent from the main body; a splint.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A thin piece split or rent off lengthwise, as from wood, bone, or other solid substance; a thin piece; a sliver.
  • noun The bar to which the traces are attached; a roller bolt; a whiffletree.
  • intransitive verb To become split into long pieces.
  • transitive verb To split or rend into long, thin pieces; to shiver.
  • transitive verb To fasten or confine with splinters, or splints, as a broken limb.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A long, sharp fragment of material; often wood.
  • noun A group that formed by splitting off from a larger membership.
  • verb intransitive To come apart into long sharp fragments.
  • verb transitive To cause to break apart into long sharp fragments.
  • verb figuratively, of a group To break, or cause to break, into factions.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb withdraw from an organization or communion
  • verb break up into splinters or slivers
  • noun a small thin sharp bit or wood or glass or metal
  • verb divide into slivers or splinters

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Middle Dutch.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

to splint + -er

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Examples

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  • “But Jesus was unafraid and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus’s paw and the big lizard became his friend.”

    ...is not available on the page the link(s) point to.

    February 3, 2013