dismember
Americanverb (used with object)
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to deprive of limbs; divide limb from limb.
The ogre dismembered his victims before he ate them.
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to divide into parts; cut to pieces; mutilate.
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to reduce, reorganize, or discontinue the services or parts of (a company, government agency, etc.).
Our business was dismembered by the conglomerate that bought it.
verb
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to remove the limbs or members of
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to cut to pieces
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to divide or partition (something, such as an empire)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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dismembersimple
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dismemberssimple
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have dismemberedperfect
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has dismemberedperfect
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am dismemberingprogressive
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are dismemberingprogressive
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is dismemberingprogressive
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have been dismemberingperfect progressive
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has been dismemberingperfect progressive
Past
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dismemberedsimple
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had dismemberedperfect
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was dismemberingprogressive
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were dismemberingprogressive
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had been dismemberingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of dismember
1250–1300; Middle English dismembren < Anglo-French, Old French desmembrer, equivalent to des- dis- 1 + -membrer, verbal derivative of membre member
Explanation
The verb dismember means to sever the limbs from a body. If you watch a horror movie, one of the necessary plot elements is for the villain to dismember a body or two... or twelve. Dismember is from the Latin word dismembrare, which itself is from the Latin roots de, meaning "take away," and membrum, meaning "limb." The verb dismember also means to cut up into pieces or take apart. If you are doing genealogical research on your family tree you may have difficulty if your ancestors are from a region that was dismembered. You may know your family was from the Soviet Union, for example, but since that country was dismembered, you now may need to check records in Uzbekistan or Azerbaijan to find the branches of your family tree.
Vocabulary lists containing dismember
"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act III
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Siddhartha
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Lincoln Inaugural Address (March 1861)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Unlike electrical work or cabinet construction, paint is statistically less likely to kill, injure or dismember you.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2024
He’s seen ants work as a team to dismember prey in minutes.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 22, 2024
On their first day as students at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, or RADA, in 2007, Hizli remembered a teacher telling them “they were going to dismember us and put us back together.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
The social safety net has tears, but the solution is to sew them up — not dismember the children who should be swaddled in it.
From Washington Post ● May 13, 2022
I’m pretty sure the only thing you could dismember is a sandwich.”
From "We Are the Ants" by Shaun David Hutchinson
"The French do not expect from the Macron leadership that it dismembers our overseas territories behind their backs," she said, describing the territories as "true levers of power, influence and economic development".
From Barron's ● Dec. 18, 2025
Fine takes on this king of all biases with admirable vigor, and it’s a pleasure — albeit a strenuous one — to follow the action as she dismembers the beast.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2017
That distinction belongs to the Financial Stability Oversight Council—the beak with which Dodd-Frank dismembers its prey.
From Forbes ● Jul. 7, 2014
And he digs a deeper hole by mangling the Beatles' She's Leaving Home, whose lyric he dismembers with bizarre changes of tone, volume and intonation.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 5, 2011
The very period of his reign witnesses the sudden growth of the Lithuanian power which dismembers the Russian appanages from the West, while the Tartar squeezes them into one mass from the East.
From Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century by Marx, Karl
If the lease was found to be consistent with the intent of Congress, “the entire West LA campus could be dismembered by private entities that provide marginal benefits to veterans,” he wrote.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2023
A dark cloud hangs over the whole enterprise, with the perils of the sea and forbidden love illustrated by long, discordant drones and dismembered sounds.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2023
It was Coyolxauhqui, carefully portrayed in stone as the dismembered lunar goddess who lost a battle against her brother, the Sun.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 6, 2023
“It started very early,” he said, producing as evidence a faded, dismembered copy of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights that he received as a teenager in school and still carries in his wallet.
From New York Times ● Nov. 24, 2022
The republic which he established was dismembered; his dearest friend was assassinated, and his own picture was burned in effigy.
From The Friars in the Philippines by Coleman, Ambrose
Ingo Arndt captured the red wood ants efficiently dismembering a blue ground beetle to carry into their nest.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2024
During the war, a number of proposals for dismembering the empire had been considered.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
“I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville,” Cooper said in January, when the map was finalized.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 4, 2022
As Mr. Ipalensenda reached a fallen African rosewood tree that he was in the process of dismembering, he called out to his co-workers who were tending a nearby kiln.
From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2022
Once the third aunt who worked at the laundry ran out and bought us bags of candy to hold over our noses; my mother was dismembering skunk on the chopping block.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
