sentence fragment

American  

noun

1. a phrase or clause written as a sentence but lacking an element, as a subject or verb, that would enable it to function as an independent sentence in normative written English.

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Grammar

See sentence.

Etymology

Origin of sentence fragment

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

For example, starting with the sentence fragment "an AI system can…," ChatGPT will predict that the next word should be "learn," "predict" or "understand."

From Salon • Apr. 6, 2023

A subordinate clause punctuated as a sentence is a type of sentence fragment.

From Textbooks • Dec. 21, 2021

If I’m not mistaken, that is a sentence fragment, and I believe Heckle would have disapproved.

From Washington Post • Apr. 24, 2020

Unfortunately the key sentence fragment in this entire article is, "running low on food and drinking water".

From New York Times • Dec. 18, 2016

And there’s not a successful novelist alive who would sell so much as a single book without making use of the artful sentence fragment, the well-deployed redundancy, even the wholly invented word.

From Time • Mar. 10, 2014