Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To free (the soul or spirit) from the body.
  • transitive verb To divest of material existence or substance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To divest of body; free from flesh.
  • To discharge from military incorporation; disarm (a military body) and release from service for a specified period: as, the militia was disembodied.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To divest of the body or corporeal existence.
  • transitive verb (Mil.) To disarm and disband, as a body of soldiers.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To cause one's soul, spirit, or consciousness to become separated from the physical body.
  • verb To separate from an object or group

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb free from a body or physical form or reality

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dis- +‎ embody

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Examples

  • I don't entirely disagree with this, but to emphasize "feeling" and to disembody "meaning" so thoroughly takes our attention too far way from the fact that finally style is a matter of words on a page.

    Style in Fiction 2009

  • The strategies and ultimate goals are the same for any kind of torture: to humiliate, disembody (through denying the victim authority over his/her own physical self), extract confessions (whether true or false) and ultimately permanently terrorize the victims to prevent further 'disturbances'.

    Shirin Sadeghi: The Rape of Taraneh: Prison Abuse of Iran's Protesters 2009

  • To disembody heads of beloved television characters.

    Books 2009

  • To disembody heads of beloved television characters.

    Art 2009

  • To disembody heads of beloved television characters.

    August 2009 2009

  • She also sees the desire to articulate color in words as an attempt to disembody women from menstruation, their bodily function.

    Female Purity (Niddah) Annotated Bibliography. leBeit Yoreh 2009

  • To disembody heads of beloved television characters.

    incipit vita nova 2009

  • In Remainder, the INS general secretary puts his theoretical ideas to lively yet unobtrusive use, for the Re-enactor himself does not realize he is a Necronaut; he is simply a bloke, and, with Naz facilitating at his side he hopes, like the rest of us, to dominate matter, the better to disembody it.

    Two Paths for the Novel Smith, Zadie 2008

  • It's up to others' interface choice as to whether or not you see my avatar's tag, and it's not like I can't disembody my viewpoint anyway and be an invisible eye... so why can't I be tiny?

    The Bandwidth of Big Hair 2006

  • You know, there's a lot of bluster about well, you know, I can get a woman or I want to see a woman for her parts and disembody her and I don't think that deep down it feels very good.

    CNN Transcript Jan 25, 2006 2006

Comments

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  • If I can find a spare head, I might adopt this one.

    June 8, 2008