splitting

[split-ing]

adjective

1. being split or causing something to split.

2. violent or severe, as a headache.

3. very fast or rapid.

noun

1. Usually splittings. a part or fragment that has been split off from something.

   Some cavemen made their smaller tools from the splittings of stone.

splitting

/ ˈsplɪtɪŋ /

adjective

1. (of a headache) intolerably painful; acute

2. (of the head) assailed by an overpowering unbearable pain

noun

1. psychoanal the Freudian defence mechanism in which an object or idea (or, alternatively, the ego) is separated into two or more parts in order to remove its threatening meaning

Other Word Forms

• antisplitting adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of splitting¹

First recorded in 1585–95; split + -ing ², -ing ¹

Example Sentences

Once the student debt is paid off, he can turn to his longer-term goals—splitting his extra cash flow between saving for retirement and buying a home.

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Campaigners asked for another option, which included splitting the school campus up and building a secondary school in a new location while keeping a primary school in Tobermory.

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Both of America’s great political parties are splitting over Israel, no longer in unified support.

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If you peer into the mind of a model, what you find won’t be recognizably human; it’s really a thicket of statistics, producing words by splitting language into long sequences of vectors.

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Irish rock band Kodaline have announced they are splitting after more than a decade together.

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Related Words

• breakdown 
• disintegration 
• dissolution 
• divorce 
• separation 
• split 
• termination