Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or process of dividing something into parts.
  • noun The state of being so divided.
  • noun Something that divides or separates, as a wall dividing one room or cubicle from another.
  • noun A wall, septum, or other separating membrane in an organism.
  • noun A part or section into which something has been divided.
  • noun Division of a country into separate, autonomous nations.
  • noun An expression of a positive integer as a sum of positive integers.
  • noun The decomposition of a set into a family of disjoint sets.
  • noun Computers A section of storage space on a hard disk.
  • noun Law Division of property, especially real property, between co-owners into equivalent, separately owned portions or shares.
  • transitive verb To divide into parts, pieces, or sections.
  • transitive verb To divide or separate by means of a partition.
  • transitive verb To divide (a country) into separate, autonomous nations.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To divide by walls or partitions.
  • To divide into shares: as, to partition an estate.
  • To separate into parts.
  • To make a selection of elements possessing a common characteristic: as, to partition a manifold.
  • noun The act of parting or dividing; the act of separating into portions and distributing: as, the partition of a kingdom among several other states.
  • noun The state of being divided; division; separation; distinction.
  • noun Separate part; apartment; compartment.
  • noun That by which different parts are separated.
  • noun In architecture, a dividing wall; a wall or barrier which serves to separate one apartment from another in a building.
  • noun In botany, the division of a parted leaf; also, the wall of a cell in an ovary or fruit; a dissepiment.
  • noun In zoology, specifically, a party-wall, septum, or dissepiment.
  • noun In law, a division of property among co-owners by their agreement or by judicial proceeding.
  • noun In music. Same as score.
  • noun In logic and rhetoric, the separation of an integrate whole into its integrant parts; the separation of any whole into its parts, except that the separation of a genus into its species, or of a species into genus and difference, is not so called.
  • noun In mathematics, a mode of separating a positive whole number into a sum of positive whole numbers. Thus, the partitions of are , and

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To divide into parts or shares; to divide and distribute.
  • transitive verb To divide into distinct parts by lines, walls, etc..
  • noun The act of parting or dividing; the state of being parted; separation; division; distribution.
  • noun That which divides or separates; that by which different things, or distinct parts of the same thing, are separated; separating boundary; dividing line or space; specifically, an interior wall dividing one part or apartment of a house, a compartment of a room, an inclosure, or the like, from another
  • noun rare A part divided off by walls; an apartment; a compartment.
  • noun (Law.) The severance of common or undivided interests, particularly in real estate. It may be effected by consent of parties, or by compulsion of law.
  • noun (Mus.) A score.
  • noun (Math.) the resolution of integers into parts subject to given conditions.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An action which divides a thing into parts, or separates one thing from another
  • noun A part of something that had been divided, each of its results.
  • noun The division of a territory into two or more autonomous ones.
  • noun A vertical structure that divides a room.
  • noun computing A section of a hard disk separately formatted.
  • noun set theory A collection of non-empty, disjoint subsets of a set whose union is the set itself (i.e. all elements of the set are contained in exactly one of the subsets).
  • verb To divide something into parts, sections or shares
  • verb To divide a region or country into two or more territories with separate political status
  • verb To separate or divide a room by a partition (ex. a wall), often use with off

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (anatomy) a structure that separates areas in an organism
  • verb separate or apportion into sections

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English particioun, from Old French partition, from Latin partītiō, partītiōn-, from partītus, past participle of partīre, to divide, from pars, part-, part; see part.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Recorded c.1430, "division into shares, distinction," from Old French particion (modern partition), from Latin partitio ("division, portion"), from partitus, the past participle of partire ("to split (up), part(ition)").

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