shard vs sliver

shard

verb
  • To break (something) into shards. 

  • To fall apart into shards, usually as the result of impact or explosion. 

  • To divide (an MMORPG) into several shards, or to establish a shard of one. 

noun
  • An instance of an MMORPG that is one of several independent and structurally identical virtual worlds, none of which has so many players as to exhaust a system's resources. 

  • A piece of crystal methamphetamine. 

  • A component of a sharded distributed database. 

  • The plant chard. 

  • A tough scale, sheath, or shell; especially an elytron of a beetle. 

  • A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig. 

  • A piece of material, especially rock and similar materials, reminding of a broken piece of glass or pottery. 

sliver

verb
  • To cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; to cut or rend lengthwise; to slit. 

noun
  • A narrow high-rise apartment building. 

  • A strand, or slender roll, of cotton or other fiber in a loose, untwisted state, produced by a carding machine and ready for the roving or slubbing which precedes spinning. 

  • Specifically, a splinter caught under the skin. 

  • A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment; a splinter. 

  • Bait made of pieces of small fish. Compare kibblings. 

  • A small amount of something; a drop in the bucket; a shred. 

How often have the words shard and sliver occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )