divided
Americanadjective
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separated; separate.
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shared; apportioned.
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(of a leaf ) cut into distinct portions by incisions extending to the midrib or base.
adjective
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botany another word for dissected
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split; not united
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of divided
Explanation
Something that's divided is sectioned or split into parts. A divided political party might be separated into several groups with very different opinions on what the party's priorities ought to be. Things can be physically divided, the way a pizza is when it's cut into eight separate pieces, or the way a highway is when it has a concrete barrier between lanes that go in different directions. There's also a figurative way of being divided, like a divided family that's feuding about something, or divided experts who disagree on the findings of a study. The adjective divided comes from the Latin dividere, "to force apart, cleave, or distribute."
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.
Inside Google’s Mountain View offices, researchers are fiercely divided over which projects deserve the company’s precious computing resources.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
Opinions are so deeply divided that any decision is going to cause anger on one side or the other.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
Figure 1 below divides people ages 55 to 64 and those 65-plus into five roughly equal income groups, from low to high, and shows their credit-card debt divided by their income.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
Their analysis showed that the systems could be divided into two broad groups: silica-rich disks and silica-poor disks.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 7, 2026
But he claimed that his loyalties were divided.
From Nazi Saboteurs by Samantha Seiple
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.
