Entertainment / Literature / Fragment: An incomplete piece of literature--one the author never finished entirely--such as Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'--or one in which part of the manuscript has been lost due to damage or neglect--such as the Finnesburgh Fragment or 'The Battle of Maldon.' Chaucerian scholars also use the term fragment to describe the individual sections of the Canterbury Tales in which the various tales have links to each other internally but lack links to the other sections of the Canterbury Tales so that scholars cannot reassemble them all into a single cohesive text. At the time of Chaucer's death, he left behind ten fragments that can be organized in various ways to make a larger narrative. These fragments are bits of narrative linked together by internal signs such as pieces of conversation or passages referring to an earlier story or the story about to come next. The fragments are usually designated with Roman numerals (I-X) in modern editions of the text, but the Chaucer Society uses alphabetical designations to refer to these fragments (i.e., Fragments A-I). Only between Fragments IX-X and (in the case of the Ellesmere family) between Fragments IV-V do we find explicit indication of an order. Consequently, modern editors differ in the order the tales are presented.
Search Google for Fragment:
Fragment Noun Synonyms: shatter, splinter, break or split (up), explode, disintegrate, come or go to pieces, come apart
Fragment Verb Synonyms: piece, portion, part, chip, shard or sherd, splinter, sliver, scrap, bit, speck, snippet, morsel, crumb, particle, remnant, shred, snatch
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Science / Psychiatry / Fragmentation: Separation into different parts, or preventing their integration, or detaching one or more parts from the rest. A fear of fragmentation of the personality, also known as disintegration anxiety, is oft MORE
Technology / Television (TV) / Fragmentation (Audience): The increasing number of audience subdivisions which, together, constitute total TV usage. Television audiences are said to be fragmented, for example, across a broad spectrum of video sources: multip MORE
Science / Biology / Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP): A heritable difference in DNA fragment length and fragment number; passed from generation to generation in a codominant way. MORE