Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To separate or isolate from others or from a main body or group. synonym: isolate.
  • intransitive verb To cause (people or institutions, for example) to be separated on the basis of race, sex, religion, or another factor.
  • intransitive verb To become separated or distinguished.
  • intransitive verb To practice a policy of racial segregation.
  • intransitive verb Genetics To undergo genetic segregation.
  • adjective Separated; isolated.
  • noun One that is or has been segregated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To separate into dominants, recessives, and hybrids, in conformity to a numerical law: said of the descendants of Mendelian hybrids.
  • To separate or detach from the others, or from the rest; cut off or separate from the main body; separate.
  • Specifically
  • In zoology, to set apart or dissociate (the members of a group): as, species segregated under another genus; faunal regions of the sea segregated from those of the land in zoögeography.
  • In geology, to separate out from the mass of a rock, as in the case of certain accumulations, pockets, or nodules of metalliferous ore, or of mineral matter in general, which appear from the phenomena which they present to have been gradually separated out or segregated from the adjacent rock by molecular action.
  • To separate or go apart; specifically, in crystallography, to separate from a mass and collect about centers or lines of fracture.
  • Apart from others; separated; set apart; separate; select.
  • In zoology, simple or solitary; not aggregate, compound, colonial, or social; specifically, pertaining to the Segregata.
  • noun In mathematics, one of an asyzygetic system of covariants of a given degorder, capable of expressing in their linear functions with numerical coefficients all other covariants of the same degorder.

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

  • adjective Separate; select.
  • adjective (Bot.) Separated from others of the same kind.
  • intransitive verb (Geol.) To separate from a mass, and collect together about centers or along lines of fracture, as in the process of crystallization or solidification.
  • transitive verb To separate from others; to set apart.

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

  • adjective Separate; select.
  • adjective Separated from others of the same kind.
  • verb To separate, used especially of social policies that directly or indirectly keep races or ethnic groups apart.

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

  • verb separate or isolate (one thing) from another and place in a group apart from others
  • noun someone who is or has been segregated
  • verb divide from the main body or mass and collect
  • verb separate by race or religion; practice a policy of racial segregation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin sēgregāre, sēgregāt- : sē-, apart; see s(w)e- in Indo-European roots + grex, greg-, flock; see ger- in Indo-European roots.]

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