dissever

From Middle English disseveren, from Anglo-Norman desevrer, Old French dessevrer, from Vulgar Latin *dissēperō, dissēperāre, from Latin dis- + sēparō.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈsɛvə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɪˈsɛvɚ/

dissever (third-person singular simple present dissevers, present participle dissevering, simple past and past participle dissevered) (transitive)

1. To separate (two or more things); to split apart (something).
   • 1564 February, Erasmus, “The Saiynges of Iulius Caesar”, in Nicolas Udall [i.e., Nicholas Udall], transl., Apophthegmes, that is to Saie, Prompte, Quicke, Wittie and Sentẽcious Saiynges, […], London: […] Ihon Kingston, →OCLC, book II, folio 191, verso, paragraph 7:

     [T]he ſaid floud of Rubicon diſſeuereth the Galle Ciſalpine from Italie.

   • a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the page number)”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590, →OCLC; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912, →OCLC:

     The storm so dissevered the company […] that most of them never met again.

   • 1886 May, Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC:

     Henchard’s wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper Farfrae by estrangement; Elizabeth-Jane by ignorance.

   • 1946, Bertrand Russell, chapter I, in History of Western Philosophy […], London: George Allen and Unwin, →OCLC, page 16:

     Philosophers, Socrates continues, try to dissever the soul from communion with the body, whereas other people think that life is not worth living for a man who has ‘no sense of pleasure and no part in bodily pleasure’.

2. To divide (something) into separate parts.

   If the bridge is destroyed, the shores are dissevered.

   • 1844, George Miles Coverdale, Writings and Translations of Myles Coverdale:

     When the corn is threshed, the kernel lieth mixed among the chaff, and afterward are they dissevered asunder with the fan or windle; even so the people in the church do first hear the preaching of God's word; now some stumble, repine, and are offended at it, and others are not offended, and yet they dwell together, one with another; but when they are fanned or windled, and when the wind of trouble and affliction beginneth once to blow, then is it easy to sunder and to know the one from the other, the faithful from the unfaithful.

• sever

• dervises, devisers, disserve