Word: divide Part of Speech: verb Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *d(w)is- Proto-Italic *dis- Latin dis- Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *dwi- Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁-der. Proto-Italic *wiðō Latin *vidō Latin dīvidōder. Middle English dividen English divide PIE word *dwóh₁ From Middle English dividen, from Latin dīvidere (“to divide”). Displaced native Old English tōdǣlan. Pronunciation: /dɪˈvaɪd/ 1. To split or separate (something) into two or more parts. Labels: transitive Example: a wall divides two houses; a stream divides the towns Example: Divide the living child in two. 2. To separate into two or more parts. Labels: intransitive 3. To share (something) by dividing it. Labels: transitive Example: How shall we divide this pie? Example: true justice unto people to divide 4. To cause (a group of people) to disagree. Labels: transitive Example: Words divide us; Wiktionary unites us. Example: For nearly two years, the pandemic has been dividing families over issues like social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccines. Now that the holiday season is here and families are gathering, many issues that have been simmering are reaching a boiling point. 5. To calculate the quotient number by which another one (the divisor) is multiplied to produce a second number (the dividend). Labels: transitive Example: If you divide 6 by 3, you get 2. Example: I could add and subtract and multiply and divide, but I entered the wilderness when words became equations. 6. To be a divisor of. Labels: transitive Example: 3 divides 6. 7. To reproduce by either mitosis or meiosis. Labels: intransitive Example: [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying. 8. To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance. Labels: intransitive Example: If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Example: Every family became now divided within itself. 9. To break friendship; to fall out. Labels: intransitive, obsolete Example: love cools, friendship / falls off, brothers divide. 10. To have a share; to partake. Labels: obsolete Example: Make good this ostentation, and you shall / Divide in all with us. 11. To vote, as in the British parliament and other legislatures, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the nays. Labels: intransitive Example: The debates were conducted with decent freedom; and the emperors themselves, who gloried in the name of senators, sat, voted, and divided with their equals. 12. To split (something) into regular steps or intervals; to mark with degrees; to graduate. Labels: transitive Example: to divide a sextant 13. To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations. Example: About the bed sweet musicke did divide