separation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of separating.
2. n. The condition of being separated.
3. n. The place at which a division or parting occurs.
4. n. An interval or space that separates; a gap.
5. n. Law An agreement or court decree terminating a spousal relationship.
6. n. Discharge, as from employment or military service.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of separating, removing, or disconnecting one thing from another; a disjoining or disjunction: as, the separation of the soul from the body; the separation of the good from the bad.
2. n. The operation of disuniting or decomposing substances; chemical analysis.
3. n. The state of being separate; disunion; disconnection; separate existence.
4. n. Specifically, a limited divorce, or divorce from bed and board without a dissolution of the marriage tie. This may be by common consent or by decree of a court; in the latter case it is called a judicial separation. See divorce.
5. n. In music:
6. n. A passing-note between two tones a third apart.
7. n. In organ-building, a contrivance introduced into instruments where the great organ keyboard has a pneumatic action, enabling the player to use that keyboard without sounding the pipes belonging to it, even though its stops may be more or less drawn. It is particularly useful where the action of the other keyboards when coupled together is too hard to be convenient.
8. n. A body of persons separated in fact or doctrine from the rest of the community; a body of separatists or nonconformists; specifically, in the seventeenth century, the Puritans collectively.
9. n. In astrology, the condition when two significators have lately been in aspect and the aspect is just over.
10. n. In horticulture, the method of propagating plants by means of naturally separable parts, as offsets, small bulbs that spring from a mother bulb, or detachable buds.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of separating or the condition of being separated.
2. n. The place at which a division occurs.
3. n. An interval, gap or space that separates things.
4. n. law An agreement terminating a relationship between husband and wife, but short of a divorce.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Chemical analysis.
2. n. Divorce.
3. n. (Steam Boilers) The operation of removing water from steam.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the social act of separating or parting company
2. n. the act of dividing or disconnecting
3. n. the state of lacking unity
4. n. sorting one thing from others
5. n. the space where a division or parting occurs
6. n. coming apart
7. n. the termination of employment (by resignation or dismissal)
8. n. the distance between things
9. n. (law) the cessation of cohabitation of man and wife (either by mutual agreement or under a court order)