A splinter is a tiny, sharp piece of wood, glass, or metal that breaks off from something larger and gets stuck in your skin. You might get a splinter from running your hand along a rough wooden fence, walking barefoot on an old deck, or gripping a baseball bat that needs sanding.

Splinters hurt more than you'd expect for something so small. They're thin enough to slide into your skin easily but sharp enough to cause pain with every movement. Getting a splinter out requires patience: sometimes you can squeeze it out, but often you need tweezers to grab the end and pull carefully. If you push a splinter deeper or break it while trying to remove it, it becomes much harder to extract.

The word also describes what happens when something breaks into thin, sharp pieces. Wood splinters when you strike it hard in the wrong place. A group splinters when it breaks apart into smaller factions that disagree with each other, like when a club splits into two separate clubs because members can't agree on how to run things.

A splinter group is a small faction that has broken away from a larger organization, usually because of disagreements about goals or methods.