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)

Verb

To tear apart by force; to split; to cleave.

* (William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds / Have rived the knotty oaks

To pierce or cleave with a weapon.

* :

And therwith she toke the swerd from her loue that lay ded and fylle to the ground in a swowne / And whan she aroos she made grete dole out of mesure / the whiche sorowe greued Balyn passyngly sore / and he wente vnto her for to haue taken the swerd oute of her h?d butsodenly she sette the pomell to the ground / and rofe her self thorow the body

(label) To break apart; to split.

* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queen) , II.vi:

The varlet at his plaint was grieu'd so sore, / That his deepe wounded hart in two did riue .

* (1665-1728)

Freestone rives , splits, and breaks in any direction.

In woodworking, to use a technique of splitting or sawing wood radially from a log (e.g. clapboards).