Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To dissect (an animal or other organism) to study the structure and relation of the parts.
- transitive verb To analyze (something) in minute detail.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To dissect, as a plant or an animal, for the purpose of showing the position, structure, and relation of the parts; display the anatomy of.
- Figuratively, to analyze or examine minutely; consider point by point.
- In chem., to make an analysis of.
- To practise the art of dissection; pursue anatomy as an employment, a science, or an art.
- Also spelled
anatomise .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To dissect; to cut in pieces, as an animal vegetable body, for the purpose of displaying or examining the structure and use of the several parts.
- transitive verb To discriminate minutely or carefully; to analyze.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
inspect orinvestigate bydissection . - verb To
scrutinize down to the mostminute detail .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb analyze down to the smallest detail
- verb dissect in order to analyze
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers, all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and far better qualified than I am to "anatomize" his writings, and "see what bred about his heart."
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Remainder doesn't pretend to anatomize the human mind, translating its ineffable qualities into sensible prose, as so much middling psychological realism post-Joyce and post-Woolf generally settles for.
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While seeking out and trying to anatomize the strange gardens abandoned in place by the Outers' greatest genius, Avernus, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her.
Books in the Mail (W/E 02/27/2010) RobB 2010
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While seeking out and trying to anatomize the strange gardens abandoned in place by the Outers' greatest genius, Avernus, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her.
Archive 2010-02-01 RobB 2010
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Easy to appeal to but hard to anatomize and harder to practice intelligently, there are honorable loyalties, but there are also stupid ones, and destructive ones, and it is particularly self-righteous and futile to stress it in a relationship that involves careers, talent and business.
David Colbert: Styron's Choice: Authors, Editors, and Loyalty 2010
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But now, as George Orwell, he is in a position to anatomize the economic and class infrastructure of St. Cyprian's, and those hierarchies of power that the pupil would later meet in grown-up, public, political form: in this respect those schools were truly named "preparatory."
Such, Such Was Eric Blair Barnes, Julian 2009
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While seeking out and trying to anatomize the strange gardens abandoned in place by the Outers' greatest genius, Avernus, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her.
Books in the Mail (W/E 12/05/2009) RobB 2009
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While seeking out and trying to anatomize the strange gardens abandoned in place by the Outers' greatest genius, Avernus, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her.
Archive 2009-12-01 RobB 2009
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Thus, during mid-century, the business of American cultural historians was to anatomize the triumphant American
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For the society Sander set out to anatomize into permanent categories was changing rapidly -- indeed, was hurtling toward self-destruction.
Just Regular Volks 2008
shanvrolijk commented on the word anatomize
"Here he anatomizes his worst traits: laziness, nostalgia, gluttony, hypochondria, some essential frivolity of mind that means his writing will always be summed up as “‘brilliant’ – that is, not worth doing”."
Source: The times Literary supplement
January 22, 2018