Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small part broken off or detached.
- noun An incomplete or isolated portion; a bit.
- noun Grammar A sentence fragment.
- intransitive verb To break or separate (something) into fragments.
- intransitive verb To become broken into fragments.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To break up into pieces: said of a cell-nucleus or nucleolus that breaks up amitotically into two or more pieces of unequal size.
- noun A part broken off or otherwise separated from a whole; a small detached portion; hence, a part of an unfinished whole, or of an uncompleted design: as, the fragments of a broken vase, of Anacreon's poems; this building is but a fragment of the original plan.
- noun A rationalistic work on the Bible, by Reimarus, a German critic of the eighteenth century. Synonyms Bit, scrap, chip, remnant.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect part.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect part; as, a fragment of an ancient writing.
- noun grammar A
sentence not containing a subject or a predicate. - verb intransitive To
break apart. - verb transitive To cause to be
broken into pieces.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an incomplete piece
- noun a broken piece of a brittle artifact
- noun a piece broken off or cut off of something else
- verb break or cause to break into pieces
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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NOTES: As curious as the fragment is the periodical that published it.
“. . . in the stiff, dead fingers, the petition of his slaves who toiled in Hell's Bottom.” 2008
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As they took his money and would not let him go, he told them who he was, and that the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life; and he began to scream for a boat -- and then to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's cross.
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Orange wanted to take his life; and he began to scream for a boat -- and then to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's cross.
A Child's History of England Charles Dickens 1841
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"Again: fraction does not exist in Nature, where what you call a fragment is a finished whole.
Seraphita Honor�� de Balzac 1824
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Thursday brought another fragment from the autobiography as a night out with my son brought back a memory from my own high school days when I was the sharpest tack in the box, Young Lance Mannion, slow on the uptake.
The Mannionville Daily Gazette Week and Half in Review. April 16-April 26, 2010. 2010
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Before that happens, the asteroid/planet fragment is attacked by Interstellar Carrion feeding off the dead and dying planets.
52 – Week 20 – God is Fragged | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News 2009
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Snicker at the sight of someone praying in front of a golden reliquary that houses a shard of bone or a skin fragment from a medieval saint or a pope.
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He was fond of quoting a fragment from a certain poem.
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An odd, amorous fragment from a letter written in Rome in June 1819 has survived.
Thomas Lawrence: The new romantic – review Richard Holmes 2010
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Thursday brought another fragment from the autobiography as a night out with my son brought back a memory from my own high school days when I was the sharpest tack in the box, Young Lance Mannion, slow on the uptake.
Lance Mannion: 2010
uselessness commented on the word fragment
Those sentence fragments. What a pain.
January 25, 2007
elgiad007 commented on the word fragment
Also, see frag.
November 15, 2008