Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To separate into components or basic elements.
- v. To cause to rot.
- v. To become broken down into components; disintegrate.
- v. To decay; putrefy. See Synonyms at decay.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To separate into its constituent parts; resolve into its original elements; specifically, to reduce (an organic body) to a state of dissolution by a process of natural decay.
- To become resolved into constituent elements; specifically, to decay; rot; putrefy. Synonyms Decay, Putrefy, etc. See
rot .
Wiktionary
- v. to separate or break down something into its components; to disintegrate or fragment
- v. to rot, decay or putrefy
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To separate the constituent parts of; to resolve into original elements; to set free from previously existing forms of chemical combination; to bring to dissolution; to rot or decay.
- v. To become resolved or returned from existing combinations; to undergo dissolution; to decay; to rot.
WordNet 3.0
- v. lose a stored charge, magnetic flux, or current
- v. break down
- v. separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts
Examples
“Surely the reason that corpses take longer to decompose is simply that mortuaries are now air conditioned as a matter of course.”
“But he did decompress, as opposed to decompose, which is how Jerry described George's summer plans.”
“In response, our human nature looks to break down or "decompose" the mega-Internet back down to human scale and in this sense the "mega-Internet" is indeed over.”
“Chachas says no firm should ever be "too big to fail," and if the Risk Monitor believes the downside risk of an institution is too great, the regulator can "decompose" it.”
“With the working image loaded in the program, you will "decompose" the image into its component colors.”
“Professor George Rossman, of the California Institute of Technology, said: "If you heat up the apatite, the hydroxyl ions will" decompose "and come out as water.”
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
“decompose" into the three component colors of images.”
“All castle ruins tend to be open to the elements as most roofs were of wood and would have been the first things to decompose or burn in a razing.”
“The charcoal would go into the ground, increasing soil fertility, while the gas would be an effective energy source, making good use of detritus that would otherwise decompose, returning its carbon to the atmosphere.”
“The initial change in oxygen would be small, but as animals continued to breath and decompose, the oxygen would slowly get depleted, assuming there was some way to sustain animal life without plants in the food chain.”
Learning from Lomborg, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘decompose’.
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Punch Lines
I'm terrible with jokes - maybe a list of punch lines will help.
to get to the oth..., consider a spheri..., professional cour..., because 31 Oct = ..., The Aristocrats, a newspaper, one to fill the b..., because 7 8 9, to go to a poultr..., it's a hickory da..., he said it was si..., a cereal killer and 147 more...
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Undo
A list of terms that denote separating one thing from another, or deconstructing a thing into its parts or to a former state. E.g., untie, divorce, unscramble.
untie, divorce, unscramble, disunite, disjoin, undo, separate, disassemble, uncouple, unhitch, disassociate, disaffiliate and 178 more...
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Earth-Friendly Organic Produce
An Ecosystem of earth/life-related words.
blueskycloudform, sojourn, reuse, reduce, compostable, habitat, ecology, bionomics, Eco-Art, sustainability, forest garden, biosystems and 47 more...
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