shrapnel
Definitions
General English
- noun pieces of metal from a shell or bomb which has exploded
Military
- noun an artillery shell containing ball-bearings, which become projectiles when the shell explodes
- noun projectiles formed by fragments of an exploding artillery shell or grenade
Slang
- noun small change, coins. A vogue term among adolescents in the later 1990s. Unsurprisingly, the term may have come from the armed forces. Partridge has recorded that New Zealand soldiers used the word to refer to tattered banknotes in World War I. Smash is a synonym from the same period.
Origin & History of “shrapnel”
The
term shrapnel commemorates the
name of
general Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), a British
artillery officer who in the
course of the Peninsular War, at the beginning of the 19th
century, invented an exploding shell
that sent bullets flying in all directions
