fragmentary

comparative more fragmentary · superlative most fragmentary

1. Consisting of fragments; disconnected; scattered.

   Fragmentary evidence suggests that he died in a foreign country.

   5 more examples

   Of this empire less is known than of other domains. From time to time, fragmentary knowledge has been carried thence by some observant traveler.

   1868, Overland Monthly, Samuel Carson, page 204

   The apparent dearth of information was at first almost disheartening. Except the Letters of Mrs. Adams, no fair exponent of the feelings and trials of the women of the Revolution had been given to the public ; for the Letters of Mrs. Wilkinson afford but a limited view of a short period of the war. Of the Southern women, Mrs. Motte was the only one generally? remembered in her own State for the act of magnanimity recorded in history ; and a few fragmentary anecdotes of female heroism, to be found in Garden's collection, and some historical works — completed the amount of published information on the subject. Letters of friendship and affection — those most faithful transcripts of the heart and mind of individuals, have been earnestly sought, and examined wherever they could be obtained.

   1873, Elizabeth Fries Ellet, Stone Irving, The Eminent and Heroic Women of America, McMenamy, Hess and Mac Davitt, page VI

   Because the effects of which could not be contested. Because this little group of scientists, drunk with their fragmentary knowledge proudly deemed that they could forego everything that was not rational, they decreed that all humanity should also go without. They never dreamed that the science in which they had put their faith would soon be completely upset.

   1923, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality, The Macmillan Company, page 340

   Speaking of his work on the cephalopods as a whole, Thompson says: “ This is far more than a mass of fragmentary observations gleaned from fishermen. It is a plain orderly treatise on the ways and habits, the varieties, and the anatomical structure of an entire group.”

   1925, William A. Locy, The Growth of Biology, Henry Holt and Company, page 28

   Because the effects of which could not be contested. Because this little group of scientists, drunk with their fragmentary knowledge proudly deemed that they could forego everything that was not rational, they decreed that all humanity should also go without. They never dreamed that the science in which they had put their faith would soon be completely upset.

   1947, Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny, Longmans, Green and Company, page 182

2. geographyComposed of the fragments of other rocks.