dismember

1. 1.

   separate the limbs from the body

   “the tiger dismembered the tourist”

   Broaderkill
2. 2.

   divide into pieces

   “our department was dismembered when our funding dried up”

   “The Empire was discerped after the war”

   Synonymstake apartdiscerp

   Broaderseparate

Other forms of dismember

past tense

dismemberred·

present participle

dismemberring·

third person

dismembers·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dismember

What does dismember mean?

dismember means "separate the limbs from the body". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dismember?

dismember has 3 syllables: di-smem-ber. The stress falls on "smem". In IPA it is /dɪˈsmɛmbɚ/.

What is another word for dismember?

Close synonyms include take apart, discerp. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dismember a common word?

dismember is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.