sunder

adj

1. (dialectal, obsolete)Sundry; separate; different.

verb

1. (transitive)To break or separate or to break apart, especially with force.

   “Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep, (some thirty feet or more,) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish.”

   “In Taran's hand the sundered bone had turned into gray dust, which he cast aside.”

2. (intransitive)To part, separate.

   “Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas: — Such are we now.”

   “… Carlo finally saw Everything, before it sunders into things; he saw Knowledge before it sunders into knowing; he saw Integrity before it sunders in integrals; he saw Unity before it sunders into units.”

3. (UK, dated, dialectal, transitive)To expose to the sun and wind.

   “Where a fair opportunity offers, and the grass is perfectly dry, the hipples are sundered; that is, broken out into beds in the usual manner, turned, and again got up into cocklets, of such size as the state of dryness requires.”

   “Except under abnormal conditions, protection can be afforded to a field by cutting a strip half a chain in width all round the field, with a reaper and binder for preference, when the crop is in the best condition for hay, and then ploughing or sunder-cutting the stubble.”

   “The trees and shrubs all around us began to show the signs of death; dried branches, leafless gray and molding wood. The ground here was as hard as stone, the dirt and dust dry as bone sundered in the desert scorch.”

   “The world, a good deal of it, sundered, scorched.”

noun

1. a separation into parts; a division or severance

   “He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder And went with half my life about my ways.”