fragmented

adjective

frag·​ment·​ed ˈfrag-ˌmen-təd 

1

: broken or separated into distinct parts

Another fragmented language group is the Austroasiatic family, whose most widely spoken languages are Vietnamese and Cambodian.

—Jared Diamond

The reality seems to be that the global audience for movies has become increasingly diverse and fragmented, which runs against Hollywood's obsession with finding that magic common denominator.

—Peter Bart

2

computing : having related or associated pieces of stored data disorganized in a way that makes them more difficult to access

Fragmented files require much more work to read than contiguous files, because to do so DOS must chase down each sector, possibly moving the disk head back and forth many times. Each of these … slows the task at hand and results in additional wear and tear on your hard disk.

—Brett Glass

You probably won't notice a marked performance boost unless your hard drive is extremely fragmented.

—Doug Stanley

A computer's hard drive becomes more and more fragmented every time a file is saved, a file is deleted or a program is installed.

—Shea Conner

Synonyms of fragmented

• fractured
• broken
• shattered
• smashed

Examples of fragmented in a Sentence

restoring the fragmented Roman sculpture was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle

Recent Examples on the Web

That leaves open the possibility that any outreach could be tactical, fragmented, or even contradictory. —Efrat Lachter, FOXNews.com, 1 Apr. 2026

At the same time, flirting with fragmented opposition figures who lack organization inside Iran is not a serious policy. —Kazem Kazerounian, Hartford Courant, 1 Apr. 2026

In many companies, this material is scattered across fragmented digital systems or buried in analog archives that have never been systematically organized. —Jason Dressel, Fortune, 1 Apr. 2026

Even college football is drifting toward a more fragmented, paywalled future. —Maxwell Adler, Vanity Fair, 31 Mar. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1817, in the meaning defined at sense 1