Yes, fracturing is a specific term not used for just any failure. There's several terms to describe material failure modes that I'm loosely aware of but at this point wouldn't use without looking them up.

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics reference for the curious

I'm going to have to look up how fracture is used here because it doesn't meet a layman's term but maybe it meets some technical definition and we all know about a being technically right.

I would think how you described it is exactly what happened.