Fragment

//ˈfɹæɡmənt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect part, either physically or not

    "a fragment of an ancient writing"

  2. 2
    a broken piece of a brittle artifact wordnet
  3. 3
    A sentence not containing a subject or a predicate; a sentence fragment.
  4. 4
    an incomplete piece wordnet
  5. 5
    An incomplete portion of code.
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    a piece broken off or cut off of something else wordnet
  2. 7
    A portion of a URL referring to a subordinate resource or anchor (such as a specific point on a web page), introduced by the # sign. Internet

    "The URL www.example.com/home#recent ends with a fragment."

  3. 8
    A split piece of an organism that has undergone the asexual reproduction process where the organism splits into one or more pieces, then those pieces become new individuals.
Verb
  1. 1
    To break apart. intransitive

    "Once the centralized power of Rome fragmented, economic, social and political power simplified and relocalized."

  2. 2
    break or cause to break into pieces wordnet
  3. 3
    To cause to be broken into pieces. transitive

    "Samois includes celebate ^([sic]), heterosexual and bisexual women as well as lesbians, and I feel very strongly that this is the wisest choice. Our community is so fragile that we can't afford to fragment it by excommunicating non-lesbian women."

  4. 4
    To break up and disperse (a file) into non-contiguous areas of a disk. transitive
  5. 5
    Of an organism: to undergo the asexual reproduction process where an organism spilts into one or more pieces, then those pieces become new individuals. intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
break upfragmentizeshardabradeaceana

Example

More examples

"An idea is an immaterial model of a real or a supposed element of reality. An idea is a fragment of our thoughts. When we think something, that single thought is an idea. Ideas are the atoms of the thoughts, and thoughts are a combination of ideas."

Etymology

From Late Middle English fragment, from Latin fragmentum (“a fragment, remnant”), from frangō (“to break”) + -mentum.

Related phrases

Klenow fragmentOkazaki fragmentfission fragmentfragment antigen bindingfragment crystallizable regionfragment shaderpeptide fragmentrestriction fragmentsentence fragmentsoul fragmentstuffer fragmentstutter fragment

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.