disintegrate

present singular third person disintegrates · participle present disintegrating · participle past disintegrated · past disintegrated

1. transitiveTo undo the integrity of; to break into parts.

   Marlites […] are not disintegrated by exposure to the atmosphere, at least in six years.

   1784, Richard Kirwan, Elements of Mineralogy

   1. transitiveliteratureTo cause to break up into infinitesimal parts through the use of a disintegrator.

      There is a Latvian gentleman named Theodore Nemor living at White Friars Mansions, Hampstead, who claims to have invented a machine of a most extraordinary character which is capable of disintegrating any object placed within its sphere of influence.

      1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine

2. intransitiveTo fall apart; to break up into parts.

   Hence they are eloquent, not of the present, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn.

   1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 20

   4 more examples

   But Schneider has wantonly misstaged Lucky's monologue: instead of a recitation by rote of a travestied history of Western philosophy and religion that gradually disintegrates into chaos, we get a choppy set of starts and stops, as of a jalopy that cannot get into proper gear.

   1971 March 1, John Simon, “The Sorcerer and His Apprentices”, in New York Magazine, volume 4, number 9, page 58

   The left outer wing structure impacted the ground first; the No. 1 engine, and then the left main landing gear, followed immediately. The aircraft disintegrated, scattering wreckage over an area approximately 1,600 feet long and 300 feet wide. No complete circumferential cross-section remained of the passenger compartment of the fuselage, which was broken into four main sections and numerous small pieces. The entire left wing and left stabilizer were demolished. No evidence of in-flight structural failure, fire, or explosion was found.

   1973 June 14, National Transportation Safety Board, “1.12 Aircraft Wreckage”, in Aircraft Accident Report: Eastern Air Lines, Inc., L-1011, N310EA, Miami, Florida, December 29, 1972, archived from the original on 31 Aug 2024, page 8

   When people can no longer disagree intelligibly, a society disintegrates; where they need interpreters, they cannot either unite or emerge from conflict into unbelittling compromise.

   1997, Frederic Raphael, The necessity of anti-semitism, page 87

   Chelica, who for years fought depression, especially sought to befriend people with troubles of their own, among them a man whose attire has varied from women’s wear to a kaffiya and Roman sandals and who often carries a boom box while engaging in violent monologues that sometimes disintegrate into curses at pedestrians.

   2007 September 23, Luke Jerod Kummer, “The Bench of Broken Dreams”, in The New York Times