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Examples

  • So obviously according to him, they were not "true" Lebanese or had so much intermixing that they shot his theory to smithereen and did not have enough "muslim" or "crusader" blood in them.

    Tuesday, September 30, 2008 As'ad 2008

  • If they were boys that had conducted this brutal assault, beat the smithereen out of a defenseless student, an honor student like this girl, I don ` t think we would be treating them so kindly, Eben Brown.

    CNN Transcript Apr 8, 2008 2008

  • The devastation was -- you know, I mean, I've seen this before, and it hits you again every time -- the way a tornado will destroy a home, just smithereen it, and right next door is a home that's barely scathed.

    CNN Transcript Apr 3, 2006 2006

  • Next, upon due reflotation, up started four hurrigan gales to smithereen his plateglass house-walls and the slate for accounts his keeper was cooking.

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • "Incidentally, " he might have added, -are you aware that there's no such thing as a smithereen?

    Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

  • "Incidentally, " he might have added, -are you aware that there's no such thing as a smithereen?

    Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

  • (He had often wondered, what exactly was a smithereen?)

    Time of the Twins Weis, Margaret 1988

  • (He had often wondered, what exactly was a smithereen?)

    Time of the Twins Weis, Margaret 1988

  • While taking someone down with a bullet seems cold, it's actually more humane that dropping a bomb on the individual that will smithereen all the other individuals in the vicinity.

    Antiwar.com Original 2009

  • I will smithereen the whole damned lot of you before you touch a tusk! "

    The Ivory Trail Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1920

Comments

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  • It means fragments; small bits; tiny pieces of a whole.

    July 12, 2009

  • Othello Travestie gives the origin of this word.  http://books.google.ca/books?id=viAtAAAAYAAJ

    Act III Scene I

    "smithereens;" quere shivereens ? Theobald

    "smithereens;" diminutive of smither to "smash" Johnson

    "smithereens." I am inclined to read "smithereens" although that "shivereens" is plausible; - "smither" is the original verb of Irish extraction and signifies to demolish to break into atoms That Shakespeare was a lover of Ireland appears from his introduction of Captain M'Morris, in one of the Henrys a very ably drawn character dialect out of the question far it ...

    September 28, 2013

  • 1795 citation

    Enter KILLEAVY

    Kill I wish he was with all my heart. If the rascal is troublesome to you, who is he, my pett

    Sally Who ? why a person that pretends to love me.

    Kill Oh, then I join you with all my heart and wish he was hang'd, shot, cut in smithereens, or

    Sally Ha! ha! ha! that's a very good joke, why it was yourself I meant.

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=BYpaAAAAYAAJ The Bank note: or lessons for ladies, a comedy, in five acts.

    Mr Taverner. page 17

    September 28, 2013

  • If there's no definition here, does that mean we can't conceive of a use of the singular?

    June 20, 2020