WE have all heard the expression "smashed to smithereens", but what exactly is a smithereen? - Steve Connor, Darlington.

THE word smithereens seems to be connected with another similar word, smithers, which was used in a similar way, although it is not certain whether smithers gave rise to the word smithereens or if smithereens came first.

Both words refer to things being broken into the tiniest pieces - atoms or small fragments - although these words are usually used in a metaphorical sense. An early record of the word smithers in the mid-19th Century refers to a family that had "gone to smithers", with one brother being a rascal and another a notorious spendthrift. "Gone to smithers" was also often used in a similar way to the phrase "smashed to smithereens". "He's broken the pot aal to smithers" was once a typical North-East phrase, although we are now more likely to say smithereens.

In Suffolk, smithers were particles of rain, while in Kent and elsewhere, the phrase "shivers and smithers" was often used as in "blowed us into shivers and smithers". A shiver was something akin to a sliver, in other words a long thin splinter or slice.

Today, a shiver is usually a splinter of glass, but it was once used in a wider sense, where it sometimes occurred in the form shivereens.

Some North-Easterners once used the phrase "It's gyen aal to shivereens", meaning a plan that had gone to pieces.

There seems to be a strong Irish connection with smithereens and shivereens as the suffix "eens" suggests an Irish origin. If so, the word would have evolved from the Irish form, smidirin, which also means atoms or small fragments.

The Irish writer James Joyce used the word smidirin in his book Ulysses published in the 1920s. It seems unlikely that the whole word is specifically Irish as it is likely to also have a partly Germanic origin.

Smithereens seems to be related to a whole host of words including smite, mite, shiver, sliver, smitten, smith and smithum and gives a good example of how words often evolve from each other and acquire different meanings.

There are a number of clues to how the word smithereens came about and all seem to be connected to the word smite in the sense "to strike".

In this sense, it derives from the Old Germanic word smitan, a word which has given its name to the occupational name smith - a blacksmith - from which we also get surnames like Smith in England and Schmidt in Germany.

Obviously, striking (or smiting) heated iron with a hammer is a significant part of a blacksmith's work so the word smith also comes from smitan.

There are a number of links between smithers, smithereens and metal-working and I think it is significant that, in Yorkshire and the Midlands, sparks or particles that fell from heated iron were often called smithereens.

In some English dialects, a related word smithum refered to powdered lead ore or lead dust or to the smoke or dust arising from a quarryman's pick. In the East Midlands and Yorkshire this same word could refer to malt dust or coal dust.

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