A child’s vocabulary expands rapidly from their first words.  By hearing and imitating the people around them, the newly learned verbalizations are added to their communication toolbox.  And when we are taught to read in first and second grade, an incredible source of new words is unleashed.  

My younger brother Eric was entering this explosive period of increasing literacy and had learned a new word: “smithereens”.  I don’t know how he encountered it, whether he heard it in some educational setting, say a classroom movie that described some explosive event (“blown to smithereens”), or if his evening reading sessions (which permitted us to extend our bedtimes) had introduced the word to him.  In any event, he was truly enamored with it, perhaps because it conveyed something powerful.

Eric would work this new favorite word into his day-to-day conversations with everyone, which was basically his classmates and his family.  I don’t know how he used it in class, but at home we were informed about how Mom had cut the apple to smithereens, and how his beachball was squashed to smithereens when he deflated it.  He made other frequent uses indicating that he didn’t really know its exact meaning.  Some of us got tired of his overuse of the word, and tried to explain what it meant.  Despite our discouragements, Eric continued his enthusiasm for it.

Eventually, an event occurred that is probably familiar to every household and kitchen.  A glass container is knocked off the counter by some accident, perhaps a cat inspecting a milk bottle.  Whatever caused it in our kitchen, there was an enormous crash as the milk bottle hit the floor and broke into many shards of glass.

We were all jolted by surprise of course, but after the initial reaction, my mother seized the teaching moment and explained, “Yes Eric, those are smithereens!” 

AI Overview

“Smithereens” means small, broken pieces or fragments, and is most often used in the phrase “to blow/smash something to smithereens,” which means to destroy it completely. The word likely originates from the Irish word smidirín, meaning a small bit or fragment. 

See also The Smithereens, but this was 1960, twenty years earlier.