fragmentedadj.
/fraɡˈmɛntᵻd/, U.S. /ˈfræɡˌmɛn(t)əd/, /fræɡˈmɛn(t)əd/ Broken into fragments, made fragmentary. Frequently as past participle.
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the world > relative properties > wholeness > mutual relation of parts to whole > separation > separation or breaking up into constituent parts > [adjective] > incohesive > separating into small pieces > fragmented
sharded1582
fragmenteda1817
morcellated1953
a1817 J. Austen Northanger Abbey (1818) II. ix. 172 In the shape of some fragmented journal, continued to the last gasp. View more context for this quotation
1830 Fraser's Mag. 2 128 What follows is a song from the same fragmented masque.
1852 Willis Summer Cruise in Medit. xxiii. 143 Heaps of fragmented columns.
1864 Reader 2 July 20 Examples of bones fragmented by man of animals extinct in that part of Europe.
1893 19th Cent. Nov. 839 The tumbled crags..Lie fragmented in horror.
1955 Times 24 June 10/7 The necessity of avoiding such isolation..was felt more profoundly than elsewhere in a Europe fragmented by history.
1964 G. L. Cohen What's Wrong with Hospitals? v. 99 With responsibility for the expectant mother fragmented or frantically shuffled between three authorities (hospital, local health, general practice).
Draft additions June 2004
Computing. Of a file: stored in a number of separate areas on a disk. Of a disk: containing such files. Cf. fragmentation n.
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1983 Re: too Slow? in net.micro (Usenet newsgroup) 22 Sept. Try running a sort on a fragmented diskette file in CP/M or MS-DOS.
1994 NewMedia Aug. 86/3 To get flawless performance, you must create a scratch file of contiguous hard disk sectors; capturing media to a fragmented disk will cause dropped frames and a hesitation in the playback video.
2003 Computer Shopper (Nexis) 1 May 132 If your hard drive is badly fragmented, you could see a noticeable improvement in the speed of your drive after defragging.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1897; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.a1817