Verb

(en verb)

To break up or cause to cease to exist.

The president wanted to disband the scandal-plagued agency.

* Knolles

They disbanded themselves and returned, every man to his own dwelling.

(obsolete) To loose the bands of; to set free.

(obsolete) To divorce.

* Milton

And therefore she ought to be disbanded .

Verb

(divid)

To split or separate (something) into two or more parts.

a wall divides''' two houses; a stream '''divides the towns

* Bible, 1 Kings iii. 25

Divide the living child in two.

To share (something) by dividing it.

* Spenser

true justice unto people to divide

(arithmetic) To calculate the number (the quotient) by which you must multiply one given number (the divisor) to produce a second given number (the dividend).

(arithmetic) To be a divisor of.

To separate into two or more parts.

(biology) Of a cell, to reproduce by dividing.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.}}

To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance.

* Bible, Mark iii. 24

If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

* Prescott

Every family became now divided within itself.

(obsolete) To break friendship; to fall out.

* 1605 , , I. ii. 107:

love cools, friendship / falls off, brothers divide .

(obsolete) To have a share; to partake.

* 1608 , , I. vi. 87:

Make good this ostentation, and you shall / Divide in all with us.

To vote, as in the British Parliament, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes.

* Gibbon

The emperors sat, voted, and divided with their equals.

To mark divisions on; to graduate.

to divide a sextant

(music) To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.

(Spenser)