Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To separate into components or basic elements.
- intransitive verb To cause to rot.
- intransitive verb To become broken down into components; disintegrate.
- intransitive verb To decay; rot or putrefy. synonym: decay.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To separate into its constituent parts; resolve into its original elements; specifically, to reduce (an organic body) to a state of dissolution by a process of natural decay.
- To become resolved into constituent elements; specifically, to decay; rot; putrefy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To become resolved or returned from existing combinations; to undergo dissolution; to decay; to rot.
- transitive verb To separate the constituent parts of; to resolve into original elements; to set free from previously existing forms of chemical combination; to bring to dissolution; to rot or decay.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive to
separate orbreak down something into itscomponents ; todisintegrate orfragment - verb intransitive to
rot ,decay orputrefy
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb lose a stored charge, magnetic flux, or current
- verb break down
- verb separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Surely the reason that corpses take longer to decompose is simply that mortuaries are now air conditioned as a matter of course.
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But he did decompress, as opposed to decompose, which is how Jerry described George's summer plans.
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In response, our human nature looks to break down or "decompose" the mega-Internet back down to human scale and in this sense the "mega-Internet" is indeed over.
Judy Shapiro: Judy Consumer Wonders: What the Heck Did Prince Mean When He Said "The Internet's So Over"? Judy Shapiro 2010
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Chachas says no firm should ever be "too big to fail," and if the Risk Monitor believes the downside risk of an institution is too great, the regulator can "decompose" it.
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With the working image loaded in the program, you will "decompose" the image into its component colors.
Recently Uploaded Slideshows bobswansons 2010
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Professor George Rossman, of the California Institute of Technology, said: "If you heat up the apatite, the hydroxyl ions will" decompose "and come out as water."
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph 2010
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"decompose" into the three component colors of images.
Recently Uploaded Slideshows bobswansons 2010
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All castle ruins tend to be open to the elements as most roofs were of wood and would have been the first things to decompose or burn in a razing.
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The charcoal would go into the ground, increasing soil fertility, while the gas would be an effective energy source, making good use of detritus that would otherwise decompose, returning its carbon to the atmosphere.
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The initial change in oxygen would be small, but as animals continued to breath and decompose, the oxygen would slowly get depleted, assuming there was some way to sustain animal life without plants in the food chain.
Learning from Lomborg, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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