shredder

Etymology

It is formed from English shred + -er.^[2][3][4] Shred is from Old English scrēadian (“to peel, prune, cut off”), from Proto-Germanic *skraudōną, related to the noun scrēade (“a piece cut off”).^[3][2][5] The OED compares similar agent nouns in other Germanic languages: Old Frisian skrêdere (“clipper of coin”), Middle Low German schrôder (“pruner; tailor”), the source of Danish skrædder and Swedish skräddare, and Middle High German schrôtære, now German Schröter (“stag beetle”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

An instrument for shredding, at first a pruning knife: 1572, in a document printed in the Midland Counties Historical Collector.^[2] Etymonline dates it to the 1570s, and Dictionary.com to 1565–75.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th and 17th centuries the word also named people and things that cut: a lopper or pruner of trees (1589–1631),^[2] a front tooth (1650–83),^[2] and, in a jibe of Thomas Nashe's (1592), someone who utters scraps.^[2] The sense "instrument" widened to machines that reduce a substance to shreds, among them machines for shredding corn or sugarcane and kitchen utensils for vegetables.^[2][6] After shred came to be used of destroying documents (by 1906), a shredder was by 1950 a machine that cuts papers into unreadable strips.^[3][2] In late 20th-century American slang it also meant a snowboarder.^[7]

Timeline

• 1572 – an instrument for shredding; a pruning knife.^[2][3]
• 1589 – a lopper or pruner of trees (obsolete by 1631).^[2]
• 1592 – one who utters scraps, in Nashe.^[2]
• 1650 – a front tooth, an incisor (obsolete by 1683).^[2]
• 1950 – a machine for cutting documents into strips.^[3]
• 1995 – a snowboarder, in American slang.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A machine that cuts paper into thin strips so that documents cannot be read: She fed the old bank statements into the shredder.^[3][2][1]
2. Any utensil, implement or machine that cuts, scrapes or tears something into shreds, such as a kitchen grater for vegetables or a farm machine for corn.^[6][2]
3. (slang) A snowboarder.^[7][1]

Related words

• shred

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge