[a. F. fragment (16th c.) or ad. L. fragment-um (f. frangĕre to break).]
1. A part broken off or otherwise detached from a whole; a broken piece; a (comparatively) small detached portion of anything.
1583. Hollyband, Campo di Fior, 75. They promised me to bring me … some of the leavinges, or fragmentes [of a feast].
1611. Bible, John vi. 13. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelue baskets with the fragments of the fiue barley loaues, which remained ouer and aboue, vnto them that had eaten.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., VI. 280. The Valley Jehosophat, and so Eastward, being now filled up with fragments of old walles.
1704. Newton, Opticks, II. III. v. 55. If a thin’d or plated Body, which being of an even thickness, appears all over of one uniform Colour, should be slit into Threds, or broken into Fragments, of the same thickness with the Plate.
1716. Pope, Iliad, VIII. 492.
| Their Coursers crush’d beneath the Wheels shall lie, | |
| Their Car in Fragments scatter’d o’er the Sky. |
1807–26. S. Cooper, First Lines Surg. (ed. 5), 155. Extracting without delay the head of the humerus and the fragments of bone.
1814. Scott, Wav., xvi. The descent from the path to the stream was a mere precipice, with here and there a projecting fragment of granite, or a scathed tree, which had warped its twisted roots into the fissures of the rock.
1848. S. C. Bartlett, Egypt to Pal., x. (1879), 221. Here were abundant fragments of old pottery.
2. transf. and fig. A detached, isolated, or incomplete part; a (comparatively) small portion of anything; a part remaining or still preserved when the whole is lost or destroyed.
1531. Elyot, The Boke Named the Gouernour, I. xix. At that tyme Idolatry was nat clerely extincte, but diuers fragmentes therof remained in euery region.
1571. Digges, Pantom., III. vi. Q iij b, heading. Howe fragmentes or partes of a Globe are measured.
1607. Shaks., Timon, IV. iii. 399. Where should he haue this Gold? It is some poore Fragment, some slender Ort of his remainder.
1809–10. Coleridge, The Friend (ed. 3), III. 109. However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments.
1852. Robertson, Serm., Ser. I. xix. (1866), 318. And we in like manner represent the Divine in a false, distorted way. Fragments of truth torn out of connection, snatches of harmony joined without unity.
1870. E. Peacock, Ralf Skirl., II. 100. This fragment of the county of Lincoln [the Isle of Axholme], though now an island by courtesy only, was, till a little more than two centuries ago, a true island.
1871. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), IV. xviii. 189. It is painful, on looking through the Warwickshire Survey, to compare the vast estates of Thurkill with the two or three other Thegns of the shire who retained some small fragments of their property.
b. An extant portion of a writing or composition which as a whole is lost; also, a portion of a work left uncompleted by its author; hence, a part of any unfinished whole or uncompleted design.
1595–6. Carew, in Shaks. C. Praise 9. Shakespeare and Barlows fragment.
1628. Earle, Microcosm., Critic (Arb.), 56. He conuerses much in fragments and Desunt multa’s, and if he piece it vp with two Lines, he is more proud of that Booke then the Authour.
1662. Stillingfl., Orig. Sacr., I. ii. § 11. In his notes on the fragments of Manetho in Eusebius.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 333, 22 March, ¶ 8. Claudian, in his Fragment upon the Giants War, has given full scope to that Wildness of Imagination which was natural to him.
a. 1748. Watts, Improv. Mind, I. xx. (1801), 183. Cowley, in his unfinished fragment of the Davideis, has shewn us the way to improvement.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III, 191, The Republic, Introduction. The ‘New Atlantis’ is only a fragment, and far inferior in merit to the ‘Utopia.’
† c. applied to a person as a term of contempt.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., V. i. 9. Achil. From whence, Fragment? Ibid. (1607), Cor., I. i. 226. Mar. Go get you home, you Fragments.
† 3. = FRACTION 5. Obs. rare.
1674. Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick (1696), 41 The next sort of Homogeneal Numbers to be examined are Fractions, sometime called Fragments, sometime Parts, sometime Broken Numbers. Ibid., 60. If 15/64 be divided by any of the three Fragments.
