What's the difference between smithereens and splinter?

Smithereens


Definition:

  • (n. pl.) Fragments; atoms; smithers.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But let's face it, in life, fairytale endings are the exception, not the rule, and so none of us were really surprised when the Cardinals came along and smashed Pirate dreams into smithereens.
  • (2) It has all the metaphors of smoothness.” Sporting a glittering LV logo at the front door, it could also be a gigantic Louis Vuitton perfume bottle, smashed to smithereens.
  • (3) The best thing for Europe would be if the euro were smashed to smithereens, allowing countries to devalue and impose capital controls.
  • (4) "He was standing there putting water in and if things had gone wrong with the water – it had never been tried before on a reactor fire – if it had exploded, Cumberland would have been finished, blown to smithereens.
  • (5) The Public Roads Authority in Oslo, which has a comprehensive network of cameras, was not alerted either: despite the fact that the government quarter, Norway’s most important seat of power, had been blown to smithereens by a bomb, the terror-response plan was not implemented.
  • (6) Often it has paperwork claiming it will be refurbished and re-used, but nobody has the resources to police the system, so in practice much of it ends up in primitive workshops in India and west Africa and China, where it is stripped out, boiled up, dunked in acid or smashed to smithereens by unskilled, low-paid and frequently child labour.
  • (7) Obama responded by pointing to the example from the Blitz: "I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during world war two, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees.
  • (8) The record hasn't just been broken, it's been smashed to smithereens, adding weight to predictions that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer months within 20 years , say British, Italian and American-based scientists on board the Arctic Sunrise.
  • (9) When the court rejected the appeal, commenting "the longer this hearing has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct", the men's expectations of immediate release were in smithereens, but so too was the reputation of British justice.
  • (10) European values have been blown to smithereens, as evident in the curbing of the right to asylum.
  • (11) He said: "It is rather strange that they said nothing when MPs were embezzling millions of pounds on furnishing their homes whilst our boys were being blown to smithereens because of a lack of funding for equipment."
  • (12) Of course, unless there are four people in this marriage – a domestic arrangement that not even the most liberal Cameroon would sanction – then that relegates those of us in the rest of the UK to junior partners, hapless children cowering upstairs as the crockery of state is smashed to smithereens.
  • (13) Cliffhangers 1980s: Dallas was famous for its cliffhangers, the most notorious being that time Pam Ewing woke up and discovered an entire series – a series that included a double bomb plot to blow JR to smithereens – had all been her dream.
  • (14) High on anticipation, the crowd responded with a thundering cheer which may have no precedent in rural Northamptonshire and the stands emptied as racegoers ran to the winner's enclosure to welcome back a jump jockey who has left the sport's previous records in smithereens.
  • (15) And you will … the All Blacks captain Richie McCaw is driven back by an Argentinian, England’s Toby Flood is flattened by the French defence and the Ireland prop Cian Healy appears on both ends of the equation, smithereening an Australian before being smithereened by a New Zealander.
  • (16) The blast blew al-Asiri to smithereens, while fortunately failing seriously to injure the prince.
  • (17) Lara Croft has never been without design problems (or presumably back pain), but to adjust her appearance while smashing her characterisation into smithereens would rather miss the point of all the criticism.

Splinter


Definition:

  • (n.) To split or rend into long, thin pieces; to shiver; as, the lightning splinters a tree.
  • (n.) To fasten or confine with splinters, or splints, as a broken limb.
  • (v. i.) To become split into long pieces.
  • (n.) A thin piece split or rent off lengthwise, as from wood, bone, or other solid substance; a thin piece; a sliver; as, splinters of a ship's mast rent off by a shot.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As the Democrats have often found in the US, when they have tried to construct rainbow coalitions out of class- and colour-defined blocs of the population, groups that can be counted on wholesale in theory often splinter into individuals that it may not be possible to count on at all.
  • (2) A splinter group of the nationalist National Liberation Front of Corsica had made a statement warning extremists that any attack on the island would trigger “a determined response, without any qualms”.
  • (3) Oleg Konstantinov, editor of local news site dumskaya.net, who was in hospital with gunshot wounds to his back and leg, and splinter wounds in his arm, said he had sent most of his reporters home for the two-day holiday.
  • (4) His National Congress party (NCP) feels sufficiently confident that it is not contesting 30% of the parliamentary seats, as an inducement to the splinter parties and smaller movements it has convinced to run in these elections.
  • (5) A patient with acute Leber's optic neuropathy had a large splinter retinal hemorrhage noted after he had strained to install fire hydrants.
  • (6) An elevated RP accumulation at the ends of the bone splinters was found from the 1st day after fracture.
  • (7) Splinter haemorrhages, hypocalcaemia and evidence of renal dysfunction were absent.
  • (8) The conclusion was drawn that the sciatic nerve is angulated at the osteotomy and further endangered by the risk of bone splintering at the sciatic notch.
  • (9) His power only grew after La Familia splintered, giving rise to the Knights Templar in 2011.
  • (10) In either case the chip waste also contains plenty of fine and finest compact chips which are broken off and splinter during the removal or knocking-off of the chips from solid bone.
  • (11) The various types of corticotomy, each with its own special purpose, include transverse or oblique, longitudinal, "splinter," and partial.
  • (12) Less than 24 hours after the murder, which many in Derry are blaming on the New IRA – an alliance of dissident republican splinter groups – the PSNI issued a description of Kieran McLaughlin.
  • (13) Extracts of Fernambouc splinters were made for serological testing.
  • (14) Last week a Taliban splinter group calling itself Asian Tigers executed Khalid Khawaja , a jihadi sympathiser it was holding hostage and accused of spying for the US and the Pakistani military.
  • (15) Iraq's "very future" will be determined in the coming days, the most senior US diplomat, John Kerry , said on Monday as he urged the country's feuding leaders to form a government and confront the jihadist surge currently splintering the country.
  • (16) Police inspector Mozammel Hoque said most of the injured were hit by bomb splinters but none was in critical condition.
  • (17) He wanted to check whether the abrasions and secondary wounds found on Steenkamp's body could have bee caused by wood splinters from the door.
  • (18) The duration of splinter hemorrhages ranged between six and 30 years.
  • (19) It can be shown that stone splinters do not injure the kidney tissue, but liquid jets generated by oscillating cavitation bubbles lead to tissue damage.
  • (20) Both excised lesions were abscesses, with associated granulomatous inflammation, fibrosis, and plant splinters.

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