anatomize

American  

[uh-nat-uh-mahyz] / əˈnæt əˌmaɪz /

especially British, anatomise

verb (used with object)

anatomized, anatomizing

1. to cut apart (an animal or plant) to show or examine the position, structure, and relation of the parts; display the anatomy of; dissect.

2. to examine in great detail; analyze minutely.

   The couple anatomized their new neighbor.

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anatomize British  

/ əˈnætəˌmaɪz /

verb

1. to dissect (an animal or plant)

2. to examine in minute detail

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Other Word Forms

• anatomizable adjective
• anatomization noun
• anatomizer noun
• unanatomizable adjective
• unanatomized adjective

Etymology

Origin of anatomize

1400–50; late Middle English < Middle French anatomiser or < Medieval Latin anatomizāre. See anatomy, -ize

Example Sentences

LuPone has two big numbers, both of which anatomize the ambivalence of married life: “The Little Things You Do Together” in the first act and “The Ladies Who Lunch” in the second.

From Los Angeles Times • May 2, 2022

It is the lack of proximity to those stories, the immediacy of hearing loved ones talk about their own experience of this “dark winter,” that makes this darkness so difficult to comprehend and anatomize.

From Washington Post • Dec. 16, 2020

They anatomize sunspots by way of US astronomer George Ellery Hale, who pioneered their observation with his 1889 invention of the spectroheliograph.

From Nature • Jul. 18, 2017

As tech bloggers ripped open the latest iPhone to anatomize its guts, a ritual known as a “teardown,” you could sense deflation.

From Forbes • Oct. 9, 2013

The town of Mansoul is well known to many, Nor are her troubles doubted of by any That are acquainted with those histories That Mansoul and her wars anatomize.

From Bunyan by Froude, James Anthony