segment

Pluralsegments

Formssegments, segmenting, segmented

1. 1
   nouncountable

   One of the parts into which something naturally separates or is cut off; a section or portion.

   Each segment of the report covered a different department.

   The worm's body is made up of many repeating segments.

   Similarsection, portion, part, piece

   Note

   Fruit and leaves supply the everyday pictures: a segment of an orange, a segment of a divided leaf. Cleft and clove are near neighbors for these natural parts. Unlike a length of something, the stress here falls on division along lines already present, where the parts are waiting to come apart, though a piece simply cut off counts too.

2. 2
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To divide something into separate parts or sections.

   Analysts segment the market into distinct customer groups.

   The software segments the recording into labeled clips.

   Similardivide, split, partition, section, separate

   Note

   The verb works with or without an object. You segment an essay, a market or a recording, and a thing can also segment on its own, dividing into parts. A by-phrase names the dividing principle, as in segment the essay by topic. The forms are regular: segments, segmenting, segmented.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A length cut or marked off from a longer object.

   The engineers inspected one segment of the bridge cable.

   A damaged segment of track had to be replaced.

   Similarsection, length, piece, portion, part

   Note

   The Latin picture survives most plainly here: segmentum meant "a piece cut off, a strip" and comes from secāre, "to cut." In this use the noun usually takes of plus the object it is measured from, as in a segment of rope, of cable or of track. It names a measured stretch of something longer rather than a shapeless scrap.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A portion of a broadcast program that deals with a particular topic.

   The producer cut the interview segment for time.

   Each episode opens with a segment highlighting viewer questions.

   Similarslot, item, spot, feature, section

   Note

   Broadcasting borrows the word for a self-contained stretch of a program, usually framed by transitions or commercial breaks. It takes on to introduce its topic, as in a segment on global warming. Nathan Rabin, reviewing The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" episodes in 2012, uses it for the separate stories such an episode holds.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A single part of a travel itinerary, such as one flight, train ride, or hotel booking.

   The travel agent rebooked the delayed segment of the journey.

   Each segment of the itinerary appeared on a separate ticket.

   Similarleg, stage, part

   Note

   Reservation systems treat a trip as a list of units, and each unit is a segment: one flight or train between two cities, or a car or hotel in one place. Leg covers the journeys between cities. Segment is the wider word, since it also takes in a hotel stay or a car rental.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   In geometry, the part of a straight line lying between two points, which is the shortest path joining them.

   She measured the segment connecting the two marked points.

   Every triangle is formed by three segments.

   Note

   Geometry's straight piece is a line stopped at two endpoints, which belong to it, so it has a definite length and traces the shortest path between them. Careful writing calls it a line segment, especially where the curved region of a circle is also in play, since a bare segment could mean either.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   One of several similar parts of an organism arranged in a chain, such as a vertebra or part of an insect's thorax.

   Insects show a clear division of the body into head, thorax, and abdominal segments.

   Each segment of the worm contracts in turn as it moves.

   Similarsection

   Note

   Repetition is what makes these segments: units of similar build set one after another along the body, as vertebrae run down a spine or the insect thorax falls into three. Each unit resembles its neighbors. A part that is merely separate, without that likeness, is not a segment in this strict sense, and segmented describes animals built this way.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   The part of a circle between its edge and a chord cutting across it.

   The smaller segment of the circle lies above the chord.

   He calculated the area of the shaded segment.

   Note

   Here the piece is a region rather than a line: the area bounded by a chord and the arc it cuts off. When the chord is a diameter, the two pieces are equal halves and the ordinary name is semicircle. Segment is kept for the unequal case, with a smaller and a larger segment on either side of the chord.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   In geometry, either of the pieces into which a plane slices a sphere.

   A horizontal plane divides the sphere into two segments.

   The dome was shaped like a segment of a sphere.

   Note

   The solid counterpart of the circle's segment: one flat cut through a sphere leaves two pieces, each bounded by the plane and part of the curved surface. Such a piece is also called a spherical cap. Spherical segment is the safer full term when the flat, circular meaning might otherwise intrude.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    A region of memory or part of an executable file set aside to hold a particular part of a program.

    The loader maps each segment of the executable into memory.

    Writing past the end of a segment can crash the program.

    Note

    A program, seen this way, is laid out in compartments: code in one segment, data in another, the stack in a third. Each is a bounded region of memory or a matching division of the executable file. The word serves both for the file a loader reads and for the memory it fills, and context shows which is meant.

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