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

At the regional level, Rodríguez argued that Latin America remains fragmented and insufficiently integrated, calling for closer cooperation in trade, infrastructure and finance. —Antonio María Delgado, Miami Herald, 25 Mar. 2026

The country had lost a generation of promising students and researchers during World War I; its universities were teaching math in uncoordinated, fragmented ways, using materials that were woefully out of date. —Leila Sloman, Quanta Magazine, 25 Mar. 2026

Origin’s platform, powered by an AI engine the company calls Cuido, ingests and structures that fragmented data—from policies, contracts, renewals, broker reports, and vendor platforms—into a single, queryable system of record. —Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 25 Mar. 2026

The result was an explosion of Software-as-a-Service products and a sprawling, fragmented mess of disconnected data. —Matt Emma, USA Today, 25 Mar. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1817, in the meaning defined at sense 1