Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A fragmentation grenade.
- transitive verb To wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or similar explosive at the victim.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb (Mil.), Slang To assault, especially to kill or wound, with a fragmentation grenade.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun video games, slang A successful kill in a deathmatch game.
- noun slang A
fragmentation grenade - verb US, military, slang To deliberately kill (one's superior officer) with a fragmentation grenade.
- verb slang To hit with the explosion of a fragmentation grenade.
- verb video games To kill.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There are minor mutinies ( "What are they going to do, cut off our hair and send us to Vietnam?"), an undercurrent of racial tension fed by the black-power politics of H. Rap Brown and Huey Newton, and resentments that provoke plots to "frag" (i.e., kill) their superiors.
The Book on Vietnam 2010
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Scrolling through gadgets such as frag grenades and camera grenades, though, needs some tightening.
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No Sir! the word "frag" did refer to killing or at least attacking the officer to stop a mission, often done with a fragmentation grenade, just as you say.
sir! no sir! 2008
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I've been told that this is the origin of the video-gaming slang term "frag" for an in-game kill -- it was originally Vietnam-era military slang for killing your officer to keep him from getting the rest of you killed, from "fragmentation grenade", a popular means of doing so.
sir! no sir! 2008
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I've been told that this is the origin of the video-gaming slang term "frag" for an in-game kill -- it was originally Vietnam-era military slang for killing your officer to keep him from getting the rest of you killed, from "fragmentation grenade", a popular means of doing so.
sir! no sir! 2008
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Actually, the equivalent of war supporters joining the service would not be war opponents staging hunger strikes in D.C., it would be war opponents flying to Iraq and opposing the war there, lying down in front of tanks, encouraging Iraqi soldiers and policemen and American soldiers and marines to desert or 'frag' their officers, demonstrating for peace in Sadr City, acting as human shields in crowded marketplaces, and so on.
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Vietnam was not the first American war where a significant number of officers were killed by their own men, but it was the only war that produced a verb describing the action: to "frag," because the preferred weapon for assassination was the fragmentation grenade, ubiquitous and impossible to trace.
1968 Haldeman, Joe & Fields, Trinity 1984
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The "frag" order that night did call for a max effort, and the group was able to ready twenty-eight airplanes with twelve 500-pound bombs each.
THE NO-BALL MISSIONS 1944
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The only area of lasting survival being reduced to the digits of the hand where dexterity in our youth's ability to "frag" one's on-line competitors in Halo 3 with one hand, while opening another "red bull" with the other is at an all time high.
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Baietto Brothers 2010
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The only area of lasting survival being reduced to the digits of the hand where dexterity in our youth's ability to "frag" one's on-line competitors in Halo 3 with one hand, while opening another "red bull" with the other is at an all time high.
elgiad007 commented on the word frag
A term from the gaming vernacular, meaning to fragment.
November 7, 2008
reesetee commented on the word frag
I believe this was used at least as far back as the Vietnam War, too.
November 10, 2008
Lee.courtney990@gmail.com commented on the word frag
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November 29, 2011