1. [n]  one of several parts or pieces that fit with others to constitute a whole object; "a section of a fishing rod"; "metal sections were used below ground"; "finished the final segment of the road"
2. [n]  one of the parts into which something naturally divides; "a segment of an orange"
3. [v]  divide or split up; "The cells segmented"
4. [v]  divide into segments; "segment an orange"; "segment a compound word"

1. \Seg"ment\, n. [L. segmentum, fr. secare to cut, cut
   off: cf. F. segment. See {Saw} a cutting instrument.]
   1. One of the parts into which any body naturally separates
      or is divided; a part divided or cut off; a section; a
      portion; as, a segment of an orange; a segment of a
      compound or divided leaf.
   2. (Geom.) A part cut off from a figure by a line or plane;
      especially, that part of a circle contained between a
      chord and an arc of that circle, or so much of the circle
      as is cut off by the chord; as, the segment acb in the
      Illustration.
   3. (Mach.)
      (a) A piece in the form of the sector of a circle, or part
          of a ring; as, the segment of a sectional fly wheel or
          flywheel rim.
      (b) A segment gear.
   4. (Biol.)
      (a) One of the cells or division formed by segmentation,
          as in egg cleavage or in fissiparous cell formation.
      (b) One of the divisions, rings, or joints into which many
          animal bodies are divided; a somite; a metamere; a
          somatome.
   {Segment gear}, a piece for receiving or communicating
      reciprocating motion from or to a cogwheel, consisting of
      a sector of a circular gear, or ring, having cogs on the
      periphery, or face.
   {Segment of a line}, the part of a line contained between two
      points on it.
   {Segment of a sphere}, the part of a sphere cut off by a
      plane, or included between two parallel planes.
   {Ventral segment}. (Acoustics) See {Loor}, n., 5.
   

2. \Seg"ment\, v. i. (Biol.)
   To divide or separate into parts in growth; to undergo
   segmentation, or cleavage, as in the segmentation of the
   ovum.
   

/seg'ment/ 1. A collection of pages in a memory management system.

2. A separately relocatable section of an executable program. Unix executables have a text segment (executable machine instructions), a data segment (initialised data) and a bss segment (uninitialised data).

3. network segment.

4. To experience a segmentation fault. Confusingly, the stress is often put on the first syllable, like the noun "segment", rather than the second like mainstream verb "segment". This is because it is actually a noun shorthand that has been verbed.

[Jargon File]