dissociative
Americanadjective
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Psychiatry. relating to or exhibiting a condition in which a group of mental processes is split off from the main body of consciousness, as in amnesia or certain forms of hysteria.
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Physical Chemistry. relating to, tending toward, or exhibiting the reversible resolution or decomposition of a complex substance into simpler components.
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relating to a disjunction or separation between two or more things.
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.
Over time, a dissociative response can generalize to situations or triggers that are far removed from the event that made it necessary in the first place.
From Slate ● Sep. 23, 2026
Conditions like dissociative identity disorder may dictate multiple support animals, and the growth in pet psychologists portends a burgeoning trend of emotionally affected pets needing their own support animals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
There are so many overwhelming ideas in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” that, at over two hours, it does have the sense of a dissociative doomscroll.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 12, 2026
One of the main protagonists in “The Dark Tower” series, Susannah Dean, is a Black woman with dissociative identity disorder.
From Salon ● Nov. 9, 2025
Very few had taken to agriculture, for which, indeed, the dry soil was seldom fitted, and the half-nomadic life of stock-farmers, each pasturing his cattle over great tracts of country, confirmed their dissociative instincts.
From Impressions of South Africa by James Bryce, Viscount Bryce
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.
