How to Use fragmentary in a Sentence

fragmentary

adjective
  • The team found a fragmentary hand stencil on the wall.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 21 Jan. 2026
  • Hard to know; records are fragmentary and conflated with myth.
    — William Meyers, WSJ, 14 Jan. 2019
  • White’s fragmentary response forms the core of the story that was used to convict him.
    — Eren Orbey, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2025
  • Most of these fossils are fragmentary, consisting of only a few bones or parts of bones.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 6 Dec. 2024
  • But many of these fossils are fragmentary and offer little detail on what this strange fish looked like.
    — Jack Tamisiea, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2024
  • All that was left was a scattering of stones and fragmentary walls on a plateau with commanding views of the plain.
    — Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 May 2024
  • Its acoustic arrangements are sparse and her lyrics fragmentary, but the mood is warm and inviting.
    — Marissa Lorusso, Pitchfork, 26 Jan. 2026
  • When the author of this fragmentary memoir was at law school, a teen-age cousin had a psychotic break and killed a young boy.
    — The New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2022
  • But reports from the field are often fragmentary and there is much discretion in when to alert the trauma team.
    — Jenny Gold, Kaiser Health News and Sarah Kliff, Washington Post, 2 July 2018
  • The upper jaw bones do not have the weak interface that the fragmentary first finds suggested.
    — Matthew A. Brown, Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2021
  • The new work focuses in on the bones, many of which are too fragmentary to be definitively assigned to a species.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 3 July 2024
  • But reports from the field are often fragmentary, and there is much discretion in when to alert the trauma team.
    — Jenny Gold, Vox, 20 July 2018
  • Her fragmentary lyrics aim for the edges of a story, rather than mapping its entire narrative.
    — Marissa Lorusso, Pitchfork, 26 Jan. 2026
  • The messages were fragmentary — a code name, a location, a password.
    — Jeffrey Gettleman, BostonGlobe.com, 26 Dec. 2022
  • The messages were fragmentary — a code name, a location, a password.
    — Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, 25 Dec. 2022
  • Also missing is the wealth of fragmentary artifacts expected at a grave site, such as stone tools used to dig the pits.
    — Byann Gibbons, science.org, 5 June 2023
  • Others said that the findings were in line with the fragmentary evidence that had been available until now.
    — James Glanz, New York Times, 23 Apr. 2020
  • As humans age, sleep becomes lighter and more fragmentary, however, which in turn means that older adults get less deep sleep than younger ones.
    — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 10 Mar. 2017
  • Some lives are permitted to remain fragmentary.
    — Literary Hub, 26 June 2026
  • The stranger left behind little but the usual fragmentary chronicles of the poor and troubled.
    — Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Online, 22 Dec. 2020
  • The discovery helped flesh out a species known previously only through teeth and fragmentary jaws.
    — Sanjay Kumar, Science | AAAS, 4 Apr. 2018
  • But in many cases the boundaries are not exact, and the information is fragmentary.
    — Bill Turque, Washington Post, 27 June 2017
  • And perhaps this decentering of the canon is inevitably a fragmentary and messy business.
    — Leslie Camhi, The New Yorker, 6 Dec. 2023
  • As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.
    — Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2018
  • Pol is not convinced that Razana is a notosuchian because the fossils found to date are so fragmentary.
    — Traci Watson, USA TODAY, 4 July 2017
  • But the messages remain fragmentary, rather than weave, the value being in the exploration rather than fulfillment.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2021
  • These rare finds, even with their fragmentary skulls and hands, unveil more about evolution and life during the early Triassic.
    — Jeanne Timmons, Ars Technica, 16 Aug. 2023
  • Staudinger uses these items to engage in wordplay, ponder the role of the artist and pen a fragmentary autobiography.
    — Washington Post, 12 Mar. 2021
  • The final chapters in the Amistad edition are fragmentary, and the book ends abruptly, ten years before Herod’s death.
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 13 Jan. 2025
  • And that record has been frustratingly fragmentary, leaving us with just a glimmer of their former glory and a host of questions about their bizarre anatomy and ill fate.
    — Michael B. Habib, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fragmentary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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