disarticulate

American  

[dis-ahr-tik-yuh-leyt] / ˌdɪs ɑrˈtɪk jəˌleɪt /

verb (used with or without object)

disarticulated, disarticulating

1. to make or become disjointed, as the bones of a body or stems of a plant.

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disarticulate British  

/ ˌdɪsɑːˈtɪkjʊˌleɪt /

verb

1. to separate or cause to separate at the joints, esp those of bones

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Other Word Forms

• disarticulation
  noun
• disarticulator
  noun

Etymology

Origin of disarticulate

First recorded in 1820–30; dis- ¹ + articulate

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

disarticulate disarticulated disarticulating

Attention! isn't trying to disarticulate the whole idea of ordered writing.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 21, 2013

"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen—I'll listen blandly whilst I disarticulate this beautiful bird."

From The Seeker by Harry Leon Wilson

Retaining Mr. Syme's incisions in their integrity, some operators prefer not to disarticulate the foot, but remove it by sawing through the tibia and fibula at once, while still in connection with the foot.

From A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners by Joseph Bell

I saw my body like an empty sack Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.

From Perpetual Light : a memorial by William Rose Benét

To a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express the kindness of their hearts.

From Mary Wollaston by Henry Kitchell Webster

Nearby, Haile-Selassie later found the lower jaw, teeth, and disarticulated bones of the hands, feet, and arm of Ardipithecus kadabba, dated to 5.8 million years ago.

From Science Magazine ● Apr. 3, 2024

"When you say cobalt-free, you're saying 'DRC, you're going to be disarticulated from the global supply chain," Riofrancos went on.

From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2021

I cleaned and polished fox skulls; disarticulated, dried and kept the wings of roadkill birds.

From New York Times ● Jul. 29, 2020

The likely sequence of events, the paleontologists write, is that the dinosaur’s carcass floated to sea, sunk, decayed, became disarticulated, and then the bones were exposed for a long time before their final burial.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 6, 2019

Cuvier was already dazzling people with his genius for taking heaps of disarticulated bones and whipping them into shapely forms.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

If he didn’t do the film, somebody else would eventually, disarticulating it with the sort of hyperbole he hated and which he made such an effort to avoid in his own accounts.

From Golf Digest ● Mar. 23, 2020

Spikelets are unilateral, sessile, crowded, biseriate on a slender rachis with four to six glumes and 1 to 3-flowered; the rachilla is produced and disarticulating above the empty glumes.

From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by K. Rangachari

Regarding the method of disarticulating at the astragalo-calcaneal joint, and removing all the foot except the astragalus, no detail need be given.

From A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners by Joseph Bell