smithereen

With a deep breath, Sarai disengaged a moth from the ledge and spurred it forward, a single smithereen of darkness dispatched into the dim.

There wouldn’t be a smithereen still left of Our world today, if not for Comrade Petrov.

Weisberg: When we had them toss a grenade into a bathroom and blow a guy to smithereens, we said, “We actually went too far. That was a smithereen too far for us.”

Just before half-time came the score to smithereen the bounds of orthodoxy with which the British game had saddled itself – and happily there was a British Movietone news camera in the West stand to record in flickeringly fuzzy sepia Obolensky audaciously stepping in off his wing to change left into right in a stride, and outrageously wrong-foot the cover which, to a man, screechingly had to pull up like infuriated cartoon cats.

No, a smithereen is not a male smither.