Definition of "divide"

divide

/dɪˈvaɪd/

verb
third-person singular simple present divides, present participle dividing, simple past and past participle divided
1. (transitive) To split or separate (something) into two or more parts.
  Quotations
  Divide the living child in two.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1 Kings 3:25
2. (transitive) To share (something) by dividing it.
  Quotations
  true justice unto people to divide
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 1
3. (transitive) To cause (a group of people) to disagree.
  Quotations
  For nearly two years, the pandemic has been dividing families over issues like social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccines. Now that the holiday season is here and families are gathering, many issues that have been simmering are reaching a boiling point.
  2021 December 15, “Has the Pandemic Torn Your Family Apart?”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, archived from the original on 2022-12-12
  It is a debate that divides Americans as evenly as any of the great political issues of the day. Should they leave their butter on the counter, or must they keep it in the fridge?
  2023 April 29, Will Pavia, “Why butter must come out of the fridge”, in The Times‎, London: News UK, archived from the original on 28 April 2023
4. (transitive, arithmetic, with by) To calculate the number (the quotient) by which you must multiply one given number (the divisor) to produce a second given number (the dividend).
5. (transitive, arithmetic) To be a divisor of.
6. (intransitive) To separate into two or more parts.
7. (intransitive, biology) Of a cell, to reproduce by dividing.
  Quotations
  [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.
  2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
8. To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance.
  Quotations
  If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Mark 3:24
  Every family became now divided within itself.
  1838, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: American Stationers’ Company; John B. Russell
9. (obsolete) To break friendship; to fall out.
  Quotations
  love cools, friendship / falls off, brothers divide.
  1605, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear, I. ii. 107
10. (obsolete) To have a share; to partake.
  Quotations
  Make good this ostentation, and you shall / Divide in all with us.
  1608, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus, I. vi. 87
11. To vote, as in the British parliament and other legislatures, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes.
  Quotations
  The emperors sat, voted, and divided with their equals.
  1776, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […]
12. To mark divisions on; to graduate.
13. (music) To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.
  Quotations
  About the bed sweet musicke did divide
  1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
noun
plural divides
1. A thing that divides.
2. An act of dividing.
  Quotations
  The extended instruction set may double the speed again if a lot of multiplies and divides are done.
  1975, Byte, numbers 1-8, page 14
3. A distancing between two people or things.
4. (geography) A large chasm, gorge, or ravine between two areas of land.
  Quotations
  Carrying light packs they left camp at daylight the next morning. Trails there were none; but they followed the general course of a small creek, crossed a divide, and dipped down into a beautifully timbered valley watered by a swift, large creek of almost riverlike dimensions.
  1922, A. M. Chisholm, A Thousand a Plate
5. (hydrology) The topographical boundary dividing two adjacent catchment basins, such as a ridge or a crest.

Definition of "divide"

divide

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noun

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