- separate
- separate vb Separate, part, divide, sever, sunder, divorce can all mean to become or cause to become disunited or disjoined.Separate implies a putting or keeping apart; it may suggest a scattering or dispersion of units{
forces that separate families
}{separate the parts of a watch
}or a removal of one from the other{separate a husband from his wife
}{the business of government cannot and should not be separated from the day-to-day lives of the human beings who conduct it— T. E. Dewey
}{separate the wheat from the chaff
}{separated his feelings from his work
}or the presence of an intervening thing or things{the Atlantic separates Europe from America
}{a thousand miles separate the two branches of the family
}{"What separates the men and the girls? A fence or something?" "Just foliage, dear, and upbringing"— Wouk
}Part usually suggests the separation of two persons or things in close union or association; often also it suggests a complete or final separation (as by death or violence){if aught but death part thee and me— Ruth 1:17
}{part two combatants
}Divide commonly stresses the idea of parts, groups, or sections resulting from literal or figurative cutting, breaking, or branching{divide a pie into six pieces
}{divide the government into the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
}{he that will divide a minute into a thousand parts— Shak.
}Divide often, in addition, carries an implication of apportioning, distributing, or sharing{divide the candy among the children
}{divide profits
}{the grocer got along well with his assistant. They divided tasks and waited on alternate customers— Malamud
}{divided his estate equitably among his heirs
}Often divide is used in place of separate, especially when mutual antagonism or wide separation is connoted{united we stand, divided we fall
}{the broad and deep gulf which . .. divides the living from the dead, the organic from the inorganic— Inge
}{the suspicion which the Citizens' Committee predicted would divide neighbor from neighbor— Clinton
}Sever adds the implication of violence by or as if by cutting and frequently applies to the separation of a part from the whole or of persons or things that are joined in affection, close affinity, or natural association{sever a branch from the trunk by one blow of the ax
}{sever the head from the body
}{severed from thee, can I survive?— Burns
}{the hour is ill which severs those it should unite— Shelley
}{finding herself severed from formal and religious education, she struggled with a sense of guilt— Hervey
}Sunder often implies a violent rending or wrenching apart{even as a splitted bark, so sunder v/e—Shak.
}{the Romans sundered copper-bearing rock by alternately playing fire and water on it— New Yorker
}{man's most significant personal relationship is sundered in an atmosphere of chicanery and buffoonery— Cohn
}Divorce implies the separation of two or more things so closely associated that they interact upon each other or work well only in union with each other{its academic tendency to divorce form from matter— Day Lewis
}{you cannot divorce accurate thought from accurate speech— Quiller-Couch
}Divorce can specifically refer to the legal dissolution of a marriage, a use in which it contrasts with separate which implies a mutually agreed ending of cohabitation without actual legal termination of the marital state.Analogous words: cleave, rend, split, rive (see TEAR): *estrange, alienate: disperse, dispel, *scatter: *detach, disengageAntonyms: combine2 *single, solitary, particular, unique, sole, loneAnalogous words: *special, especial, specific, individual: peculiar, distinctive (see CHARACTERISTIC): detached, disengaged (see DETACH)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
