divide

verb

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

   “a wall divides two houses; a stream divides the towns”

   “Divide the living child in two.”

2. (transitive)To share (something) by dividing it.

   “How shall we divide this pie?”

   “true justice unto people to divide”

3. (transitive)To cause (a group of people) to disagree.

   “Words divide us, Wiktionary unites us.”

   “For nearly two years, the pandemic has been dividing families over issues like social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccines. Now that the holiday season is here and families are gathering, many issues that have been simmering are reaching a boiling point.”

   “It is a debate that divides Americans as evenly as any of the great political issues of the day. Should they leave their butter on the counter, or must they keep it in the fridge?”

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

   “If you divide 6 by 3, you get 2.”

   “I could add and subtract and multiply and divide, but I entered the wilderness when words became equations.”

5. (transitive)To be a divisor of.

   “3 divides 6.”

6. (intransitive)To separate into two or more parts.
7. (intransitive)Of a cell, to reproduce by dividing.

   “[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.”

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

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

   “Every family became now divided within itself.”

9. (obsolete)To break friendship; to fall out.

   “love cools, friendship / falls off, brothers divide.”

10. (obsolete)To have a share; to partake.

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

11. To vote, as in the British parliament and other legislatures, 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.

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

12. To mark divisions on; to graduate.

    “to divide a sextant”

13. To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.

    “About the bed sweet musicke did divide”

noun

1. A thing that divides.

   “Stay on your side of the divide, please.”

2. An act of dividing.

   “The divide left most of the good land on my share of the property.”

   “The extended instruction set may double the speed again if a lot of multiplies and divides are done.”

3. A distancing between two people or things.

   “There is a great divide between us.”

   “Republicans and Democrats interpret individualism differently, and those divides are more pronounced than ever in our deeply polarized political climate.”

4. A large chasm, gorge, or ravine between two areas of land.

   “If you're heading to the coast, you'll have to cross the divide first.”

   “The team crossed streams and jumped across deep, narrow divides in the glacier.”

   “Carrying light packs they left camp at daylight the next morning. Trails there were none; but they followed the general course of a small creek, crossed a divide, and dipped down into a beautifully timbered valley watered by a swift, large creek of almost riverlike dimensions.”

5. The topographical boundary dividing two adjacent catchment basins, such as a ridge or a crest.