shred

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
shred/ʃred/

▶noun

• 1 a strip of material that has been torn, cut, or scraped from something larger.

• 2 a very small amount.

▶verb (shreds, shredding, shredded) tear or cut into shreds.

– origin OE scrēad ‘piece cut off’, scrēadian ‘trim, prune’, of W. Gmc origin; rel. to shroud.