Frag
Frag, as well as fragging and fragged, are video game terms which describe killing another player's character in a game, especially an opponent in a deathmatch.
"Frag" is also a common abbreviation for "fragmentation grenade."
History
The term "fragging" became popular among American soldiers in the Vietnam War where it described deliberately killing a fellow soldier, typically a hated officer, with a fragmentation grenade because its indiscriminate deadly explosion made it easier to make the death look like an accident. Later, the term "fragging" was used to describe murdering a fellow soldier with any weapon. Fragging should not to be confused with friendly fire which is the accidental injury or killing of a fellow soldier.
When the game Doom was released, the deathmatch modes included a statistic called "frags" which would increase each time a player killed an opponent's character and decrease each time a player killed their own character. At the end of the deathmatch, the player with the largest number of frags is the winner. The term frag was also used in its more traditional sense in cooperative mode, where it only increased when you killed a teammate through friendly fire.
Because Doom was so popular, the term stuck and later first-person shooters including Quake, Blood, and Unreal used the term as well helping to cement it into gamer lexicon. Since deathmatch mode is far more popular than co-op mode, "frag," as it's used in video games, is more strongly associated with killing opponents rather than teammates.
See also
Links
- doom.fandom.com/wiki/Frag - Doom Wiki.
