fractus

[frak-tuhs]

adjective

Meteorology.

1. (of a cloud) containing small, individual elements that have a ragged appearance.

Word History and Origins

Origin of fractus¹

First recorded in 1965–70; from Latin frāctus, past participle of frangere “to break”; break

Example Sentences

Even its former Latin name, Fractus Mons, “broken mountain,” hints at violence and decay.

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A cumulus, for example, might just be a cumulus; or it might be a cumulus fractus, if its edges are tattered; or a cumulus pileus, if a smaller cloud appears over it like a hood.

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Coined by the mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot, the term comes from the Latin “fractus,” meaning broken.

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Every bit of furniture was shaking and tottering around him, the windows rattled noisily as if shaken by an ague, the very chair on which he sat rocked to and fro beneath him, and the writing-table bobbed up and down beneath his hand so that the pen ran away from the paper; but for all that he finished his letter, and when he came to the end of it he wrote at the bottom in firm characters: "Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ!"

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This foreboding scene, pictured by Richard Robotham, depicts a cumulus fractus under the base of well-developed cumulus clouds.

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