The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Fragment \Frag"ment\, n. [L. fragmentum, fr. frangere to break:
   cf. F. fragment. See Break, v. t.]
   A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect
   part; as, a fragment of an ancient writing.
   [1913 Webster]

         Gather up the fragments that remain.     --John vi. 12.
   [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

fragment
    n 1: a piece broken off or cut off of something else; "a
         fragment of rock"
    2: a broken piece of a brittle artifact [syn: shard, sherd,
       fragment]
    3: an incomplete piece; "fragments of a play"
    v 1: break or cause to break into pieces; "The plate fragmented"
         [syn: break up, fragment, fragmentize, fragmentise]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

181 Moby Thesaurus words for "fragment":
   abrade, ace, ana, analects, anthology, atom, atomize, beat, bit,
   bray, break into pieces, break to pieces, break up, brecciate,
   burst, butt, chip, chunk, cleave, clip, clipping, clippings,
   collectanea, collection, collop, come apart, comminute,
   contriturate, crash, crumb, crumble, crunch, crush, cut,
   cut to pieces, cutting, cuttings, dab, debris, demolish, diffuse,
   disassemble, disintegrate, dismantle, disperse, disrupt, dole,
   dollop, dot, dram, dribble, driblet, dwarf, end, excerpta,
   excerpts, explode, extracts, farthing, fission, fleck, florilegium,
   flour, flowers, flyspeck, fragments, gleanings, go to pieces, gob,
   gobbet, grain, granulate, granule, granulize, grate, grind,
   grind to powder, groat, hair, handful, hunk, iota, jot, levigate,
   little, little bit, lota, lump, make mincemeat of, mash, mill,
   mince, minim, minimum, minutiae, miscellanea, miscellany, mite,
   modicum, moiety, molecule, morsel, mote, nutshell, ounce, paring,
   part, particle, pash, pebble, pestle, pick to pieces, piece, pinch,
   pittance, point, portion, pound, powder, pull in pieces,
   pull to pieces, pulverize, rasher, reduce to powder,
   reduce to rubble, remnant, rend, rive, scatter, scoop, scrap,
   scrunch, scruple, shard, shatter, shaving, shiver, shred, slice,
   sliver, smash, smash up, smatter, smidgen, smitch, smithereen,
   smithereens, snack, snatch, snip, snippet, speck, splinter, split,
   split up, spoonful, spot, squash, squish, stitch, stump, sunder,
   take apart, tatter, tear apart, tear to pieces, tear to shreds,
   tear to tatters, thimbleful, tiny bit, tittle, total,
   trifling amount, triturate, trivia, unbuild, undo, unmake, whit,
   wrack up, wreck



The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

fragmentation
fragment

   1.  segmentation.

   2. The process, or result, of splitting a large area of free
   memory (on disk or in main memory) into smaller non-contiguous
   blocks.  This happens after many blocks have been allocated
   and freed.  For example, if there is 3 kilobytes of free space
   and two 1k blocks are allocated and then the first one (at the
   lowest address) is freed, then there will be 2k of free space
   split between the two 1k blocks.  The maximum size block that
   could then be allocated would be 1k, even though there was 2k
   free.  The solution is to "compact" the free space by moving
   the allocated blocks to one end (and thus the free space to
   the other).

   As modern file systems are used and files are deleted and
   created, the total free space becomes split into smaller
   non-contiguous blocks (composed of "clusters" or "sectors"
   or some other unit of allocation).  Eventually new files being
   created, and old files being extended, cannot be stored each
   in a single contiguous block but become scattered across the
   file system.  This degrades performance as multiple seek
   operations are required to access a single fragmented file.

   Defragmenting consolidates each existing file and the free
   space into a continuous group of sectors.  Access speed will
   be improved due to reduced seeking.

   The rate of fragmentation depends on the algorithm used to
   allocate space and the number and position of free sectors.  A
   nearly-full file system will fragment more quickly.

   MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows use the simplest algorithm to
   allocate free clusters and so fragmentation occurs quickly.  A
   disk should be defragmented before fragmentation reaches 10%.

   See garbage collection.

   (1997-08-29)