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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

From the O.E.D. Second (digital) Edition

  shivered, ppl. a.

  (ˈʃɪvəd) 

  [f. shiver v.1 + -ed1.] 

  Broken, shattered. 

    1542 Wyatt Poems, ‘The furious gun’, The furyous gonne‥cracketh in sonder: and in the ayer doeth rore the shevered peces.

    1621 G. Sandys Ovid's Met. v. (1626) 90 And through his flesh the shiuered bones arise.

    1764 Gray Welsh Fragm., Conan 8 As the thunder's fiery stroke, Glancing on the shiver'd oak.

    1815 Scott Ld. of Isles iii. xii, Where Coolin stoops him to the west, They saw upon his shiver'd crest The sun's arising gleam.

    1897 F. Thompson New Poems 221 Like shivered moonlight on long waters.

The 1621 quote is pretty gory and visceral, someone injured so badly their bones are internally shattered into shards and knives, now sticking out through the flesh.

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I thought it was just a synonym for "shattered", but it does seem to be more than that - there's a lot of "oak tree + lightning" in there, and not much "oops, I dropped a milk jug". Maybe it's closer to our modern "exploded"?

Here's two from 1797, both describing the same storm: "the old poor houſe was tremendously ſtruck by the lightning; the roof was entirely torn off and demoliſhed, the window frames driven in and ſhivered to pieces" and "The ship Elizabeth, retaken by the Alcmene, had her fore-top-mast shivered; as was an oak, a foot in diameter, in Yatton Church-yard."

(Do you have access to the OED via a fairly cheap route? That's something I'd really like to have).

One of the synonyms we still sometimes use is "sundered".

Sundered has a lot of other connotations too.

For example: a person might be sundered. That is not quite the same as shivered or shattered. However I will grant that: alliteratively, they all fall within the same vein.

Words like these is why poetry are possible or even viable. (Soz).

"The furyous gonne‥cracketh in sonder: and in the ayer doeth rore the shevered peces."

That's quite hard to translate into modern English despite all the words being fairly obvious. I'm not too sure about "in sonder" but I'll go for "like thunder".

"The furious gun cracked like thunder: and in the ear it roared across the shattered peace"

However, I prefer the sound of the original.

As a note of interest "Gonne" has been in use in recent times in the Discworld series:

  With almost supernatural power, the Gonne can possess the mind of the man who uses it. It shows him the power he has in his hands, and erases all scruples by telling him what could be achieved with this power.

~ https://wiki.lspace.org/Gonne

"in sonder" is just "in sunder". "The furious gun cracked in sunder and in the air did roar the shivered pieces"

I guess this is where the noun “shiv” comes from. I don’t think I’d ever heard it before playing The Last of Us.

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