dissect

present singular third person dissects · participle present dissecting · participle past dissected · past dissected

1. transitiveliteralTo study an animal's anatomy by cutting it apart; to perform a necropsy or an autopsy.

   She was the first person in her class to properly dissect the sheep heart.

   2020, Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books, page 130

2. transitiveliteralTo study a plant's or other organism's anatomy similarly.
3. figurativelytransitiveTo analyze an idea in detail by delineating between its parts.
4. derogatoryfigurativelytransitiveTo decontextualize an idea, especially through overanalysis by delineating between its parts too strongly based on style, usually involving pedantry, at the expense of substance.

   Academics tend to take Indigenous oral histories out of their contexts and dissect them according to Western disciplinary objectives and foci (see figure 1).

   2000, Winona Lu-Ann Stevenson, Decolonizing Tribal Histories, University of California, Berkeley

   2 more examples

   By focusing excessively on dissecting the text into 'forms' and exploring their supposed evolution, form criticism overlooks the larger literary and historical context within which these forms exist.

   2023 July 16, Edward D. Andrews, BIBLICAL EXEGESIS: Biblical Criticism on Trial, Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp, page 242

   There should be a more holistic approach both to behavior and to inner experience. Köhler (1929), in the first edition of his Gestalt psychology book, made a similar parallel. Both classical psychology and behaviorism decontextualize, and in this way, both have an unnatural tendency to dissect human mental life into meaningless atoms.

   2023, Csaba Pléh, Laying the Foundations of Independent Psychology: The Formation of Modern Psychology, Taylor & Francis, page 369

   Synonyms: contextomize

5. transitiveliteralanatomyTo separate muscles, organs, etc. without cutting into them or disrupting their architecture.

   Now dissect the triceps away from its attachment on the humerus.

6. transitiveliteralmedicineOf an infection or foreign material, following the fascia separating muscles or other organs.