Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To cut apart or separate (tissue), especially for anatomical study.
- transitive verb To examine, analyze, or criticize in minute detail.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In geology, to cut up or erode (a plateau, mountain, etc.) into numerous irregular valleys or ravines: as, a dissected plateau; a dissected mountain-range.
- To cut in pieces; divide into parts with or as with a cutting instrument: as, to
dissect a fowl. Specifically - 2. To cut in pieces, or separate the distinct or elementary parts of, as an animal or a plant, for the purpose of studying its organization or the functions and morbid affections of its organs and tissues; anatomize.
- To examine part by part or point by point; treat or consider piecemeal; analyze, as for the purpose of criticism; describe in detail: as, to
dissect a man's character.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb (Anat.) To divide into separate parts; to cut in pieces; to separate and expose the parts of, as an animal or a plant, for examination and to show their structure and relations; to anatomize.
- transitive verb To analyze, for the purposes of science or criticism; to divide and examine minutely.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To
study ananimal 'sanatomy bycutting it apart; to perform anecropsy or anautopsy . - verb transitive To study a
plant or otherorganism 's anatomy similarly. - verb transitive To
analyze anidea in detail byseparating it into itsparts . - verb transitive, anatomy, surgery To separate
muscles ,organs , and so on without cutting into them or disrupting theirarchitecture . - verb transitive, pathology Of an
infection orforeign material, following thefascia separating muscles or other organs.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb cut open or cut apart
- verb make a mathematical, chemical, or grammatical analysis of; break down into components or essential features
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Those titles dissect companies that exhibit an attribute -- long-term financial success, say -- and then describe the behaviors they use to achieve that result.
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More to the point, readers who reject all approaches to fiction that go beyond its potential to entertain or provide pleasure are not thereby safeguarding the purity of reading, nor are readers who attempt to in one way or another to "dissect" works of fiction violating that purity.
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And here to help us kind of dissect this in really a long history of scaring you to the polls and making you vote for a certain candidate.
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But I can say with confidence that political strategists who cannot either construct or "dissect" the emotional structure of an ad like this present a far greater danger to the Democratic Party and its values than all President Bush's appointees to the federal bench.
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It's another thing for it to be broadcast, where panels like this one can assemble and on a daily basis kind of dissect everything that's been done.
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To understand a lot of the legalese that we heard taking place over the last several minutes, we have our legal analyst Roger Cossack to kind of dissect it and explain to us what was taking place.
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In the elementary classroom of Sandy Stevens and Linda Amis students decided to 'dissect' a high school project question to see if they had a clear understanding of its meaning.
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In the elementary classroom of Sandy Stevens and Linda Amis students decided to 'dissect' a high school project question to see if they had a clear understanding of its meaning.
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In the elementary classroom of Sandy Stevens and Linda Amis students decided to 'dissect' a high school project question to see if they had a clear understanding of its meaning.
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In fact the more we "dissect" Life itself thus separate and categorize it with such tenacity, do we find ourselves falling further and further away from the Truth of Life - God if you will. en Español
qroqqa commented on the word dissect
BrE speakers strongly prefer a diphthong /daɪ-/ in the initial syllable to /dɪ-/ (89% in a 2007 survey for the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary).
August 4, 2008