Consisting of small, incomplete, or disconnected pieces; not forming a complete or unified whole.
From Latin 'fragmentarius', derived from 'fragmentum' (a piece broken off). This adjective entered English to describe things that exist as fragments, with the '-ary' suffix indicating a relation or connection to the root concept.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragmentary—ancient texts so broken that scholars spend decades reassembling a few pages—yet they revolutionized our understanding of early Judaism because even fragments from 2,000 years ago reveal truths no complete text could match.
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