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Dismember   Listen
verb
Dismember  v. t.  (past & past part. dismembered; pres. part. dismembering)  
1.
To tear limb from limb; to dilacerate; to disjoin member from member; to tear or cut in pieces; to break up. "Fowls obscene dismembered his remains." "A society lacerated and dismembered." "By whose hands the blow should be struck which would dismember that once mighty empire."
2.
To deprive of membership. (Obs.) "They were dismembered by vote of the house."
Synonyms: To disjoint; dislocate; dilacerate; mutilate; divide; sever.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dismember" Quotes from Famous Books



... timberland has been set aside for the public use and to remain in the public hands than during all the rest of our history put together. To-day the National Forests are reasonably safe in the protection of public opinion, not against all attack, it is true, but against any successful attempt to dismember and turn them over to the special interests who already control the bulk and the best of our forests. The public has accepted forestry as necessary to the public welfare, both in the present and in the future; State ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot

... is hurt to death. No vengeance can suffice him; Baron-like He strikes amid the press, cuts shields embossed And ashen shafts, and spears, feet, shoulders, wrists And breasts of horsemen. He who saw him thus Dismember Saracens, corse over corse Heap on the ground, would of a vassal true Remembrance keep. Nor does he now forget The rallying cry of Carle:—"Montjoie!" he cries Loudly and clear; then calls Rolland, his friend And compeer:—"Sire companion, stand by me! ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... battle soon commenced on the sea and on the land. Both parties fought with desperation. Russia and Austria endeavored to unite France with them, in the attempt to dismember the Turkish empire as Poland had been partitioned, but France now stood in dread of the gigantic growth both of Russia and of Austria, and was by no means disposed to strengthen those powers. England was also secretly aiding the Turks and sending them supplies. Influenced ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... hearts of a majority in Congress now yearned with an irrepressible zeal for the consummation of an event which they knew to be inevitable; yet there seemed to be no one courageous enough in that assembly to step forth and take the momentous responsibility of lifting the knife that should dismember the British Empire. The royal government would mark that man as an arch-rebel, and all its energies would be brought to bear to quench his spirit, or to hang him on ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... creature of French virtues, and possibly of French defects. It cannot be imitated by the English. The roughness, the impatience, the more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember such a commonwealth. But this random gathering of young French painters, with neither apparatus nor parade of government, yet kept the life of the place upon a certain footing, insensibly imposed their etiquette upon the docile, and by caustic speech enforced their edicts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... faith, and—(it was too strong for him)—he had made much fun at her expense. He was a mass of contradictions. He had a feeling for duty no less lofty than his wife's, and, at the same time, a merciless desire to analyze, to criticize, and to avoid deception, which made him dismember and take to pieces his moral imperative. He could not see that he was digging away the ground from under his wife's feet: he used cruelly to discourage her. When he realized that he had done so, he suffered even more than she: but ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... belongs to the People who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it, or their Revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendations of Amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... India; and if the army in Britain gradually grew more British, it was due to the weakness and not to the policy of the imperial government. There was no attempt to form a British constitution, or weld British tribes into a nation; for Rome brought to birth no daughter states, lest she should dismember her all-embracing unity. So the nascent nations warred within and rent her; and when, enfeebled and distracted by the struggle, she relaxed her hold on Britain, she left it more cultivated, perhaps, but more enervated and hardly stronger or more ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... The three Estates were asked to give an opinion as to the power of the Crown to alienate Normandy, the step insisted upon by the Duke of Burgundy. Their reply was to the effect that the nation forbids the Crown to dismember the realm; they supported their opinion by liberal promises of help. Thus fortified by the sympathy of his people, Louis began to break up the coalition. He made terms with the Duc de Bourbon and the House ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... by a mark or border of woodland, swamp, or hill. On the other hand, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia, with a vague and ill-defined internal border, had harder work to fight their way in against a united Welsh resistance; and it was only very slowly that they pushed across the central watershed, to dismember the unconquered remnant of the Britons at last into the three isolated bodies of Damnonia (Cornwall and Devon), Wales Proper, and Strathclyde. This is probably why the earliest settlements were made in these isolated coast regions, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... did the old gentleman expect that he was educating a youth who should one day dismember the British Empire, and break his own heart, which truly came to pass; for on hearing that Washington had captured Cornwallis and all his army, he called out to his black servant, 'Come, Joe, carry me to my bed, for it is high ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... contracting parties, and there never were greater than at that time. The House of Austria, in the war immediately preceding that treaty, intended to make itself absolute in the empire, and to overthrow the rights of the respective states of it. The view of France was to weaken and dismember the House of Austria to such a degree, as that it should no longer be a counterbalance to that of Bourbon. Sweden wanted possessions on the continent of Germany, not only to supply the necessities of its own poor and barren country, but likewise ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... covenant, about the promises, whether absolute or conditional; and there is too much practical debate in perplexed consciences about this, how to find something in themselves to fit and fashion them for the redemption. But truly, if we would not disjoin and dismember the truth of God, but take it all entirely as one great design of love and mercy revealed to sinners, and so conjoin the promises of the covenant into one bundle, we would certainly find that it hath the voice of Jacob, though it seem to have the hand of Esau; we find ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... said. Not so the defeated, irritated, angered, frenzied party.... Your case is quite like that of Jefferson. He brought the first Republican party into power against and over a party ready to resist and dismember the government. Partisan as he was, he sank the partisan in the patriot, in his inaugural address; and propitiated his adversaries by declaring, 'We are all Federalists; all Republicans.' I could wish that you would think it wise to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... me—It was almost twelve months from the day Foe left the portico of the Flaxman Building Hotel, New York, that he stepped ashore on the beach below San Ramon and resigned his light suitcase to a herd of bare-legged boys who offered to carry it up to the hotel, but seemed likelier to dismember it on the way and share up the shreds. They took him, as a matter of course, for a plantation inspector, arrived in the off-season. He was the only passenger landed from the P.M. Diaz, which had dropped anchor ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our friends pretty much as friends' misfortunes are usually regarded in life—occasions for a tender pity, and a hopeful trust in Providence. Let them—the writer speaks of the Allied armies—let them go on in the career of rapine and cruelty; let them ravage the Duchies and dismember Denmark; but a time will come when the terrible example of unlawful aggression shall be retorted upon themselves, and the sorrows of Schleswig be expiated on ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... which, should it break out, may become general and be of long duration; that the war still continues between Spain and the independent governments, her late Provinces, in this hemisphere; that it is likewise menaced between Portugal and Brazil, in consequence of the attempt of the latter to dismember itself from the former, and that a system of piracy of great extent is maintained in the neighboring seas, which will require equal vigilance and decision to suppress it, the reasons for sustaining the attitude which we now hold and for pushing forward all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... criticism, though it is clear that his inflexible and puissant nature found a savage selfish pleasure in trampling upon power and humbling pride at warfare with his own. Yet his was in no sense an egotistic purpose like that which moved the Popes of the Renaissance to dismember Italy for their bastards. Hildebrand, like Matilda, was himself the creature of a great idea. These two potent personalities completely understood each other, and worked towards a single end. Tho mythopoeic fancy might conceive of them as the male and female manifestations of one dominant faculty, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... wrath in death and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Caesar. 165 Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar, And in the spirit of men there is no blood: O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit, And not dismember Caesar! But, alas, 170 Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends, Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully; Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds: And ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... Look here! You see those beautiful toys?" pointing to the implements of torture. "I will dismember you ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... concerns in India were matters of delicacy, that to divulge anything relative to them would be mischievous to the state. He did not tell us that those who would inquire into his proceedings were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not the presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executing with integrity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Before he could climb out of reach he was grabbed by the ankle and pulled down. The wounded bear came jumping up the mountain and caught him by the shoulder. They pulled against each other as if to dismember him. His hip was dislocated and he ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... "Constantinople" as part of Russia's share in an eventual partition of the whole Turkish empire. Tolstoi wrote to St. Petersburg that France was postponing the evacuation of Prussia for selfish purposes, meaning to dismember her; and from that starting-point depicted the horrors of a Napoleonic Europe. Such opinions dismayed Alexander, and although he received Caulaincourt with distinction equal to that which had been accorded to Tolstoi, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... of the order, its treasury, and a multitude of prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy, who shortly afterward marched against Marienberg and closely besieged it. Several of the feudatories of the knights sent in their submission to the King of Poland, who began at once to dismember the dominions of the order and to assign portions to his followers. But this proved to be premature. The knights found in Henry de Planau a valiant leader, who defended the city with such courage and obstinacy that, after fifty-seven days' siege, the enemy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... good, and when, in this way, they shall have become intelligible language, I will admit that he will have some reasons for doubting a God. If this should seem too much like artificial mind, he may take some little animal, all constructed at his hands, and dismember its limbs and dissect its body, and then within some vessel let him throw its various parts at random, and seizing that vessel shake it most lustily till bone shall come to bone, joint to joint, and the little creature be restored to its original ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... return for the captured German colonies in Africa and the Pacific Ocean, with the payment of indemnities to Germany, now it was plain that the nations of the Entente intended to wipe out utterly the German nation and dismember the empire of Austria-Hungary; and that since Germany had offered her enemies an honorable peace and they had refused, the only thing left for the central powers to do was to fight to the bitter end and use any means whatsoever to force ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... Abbe de la Bleterie, (Hist. de Jovien, tom. i. p. 212-227.) though a severe casuist, has pronounced that Jovian was not bound to execute his promise; since he could not dismember the empire, nor alienate, without their consent, the allegiance of his people. I have never found much delight or instruction ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... against the Arabs. I attach no such meaning to it. What he, the whole of Mussalmans and therefore I think also the Hindus resist is the shameless attempt of England and the other Powers under cover of self-determination to emasculate and dismember Turkey. If I understand the spirit of Islam properly, it is essentially republican in the truest sense of the term. Therefore if Armenia or Arabia desired independence of Turkey they should have it. In the case of Arabia, complete Arabian independence would mean transference ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... a grimace, a spasm, or indication of suffering. In this case, as we have seen, he smokes, derides, menaces, sings, and shows his contempt, by calling them by the most reproachful of all epithets—old women. When he falls insensible, they scalp and dismember him, and the remainder ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... to pursue this line of remark, I dislike it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up this great government! to dismember this glorious country! to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government or any people! No, Sir! no, Sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... where the litter had been stood a eunuch. "I am Envy," he said, and his eyes drooped sullenly. "I separate those that love; I dismantle altars and dismember nations. I corrode and corrupt; I destroy, and I never rebuild. My joy is malice, and my creed false-witnessing. Mary, come with me, and you ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... said nothing of their adventures, it was thought they would then speak, and relate the impressions of their voyage. But for some reason or other both were silent. And so also was Frycollin, whom his congeners in their delirium had failed to dismember. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... dissect, anatomize; dislimb[obs3]; take to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces, tear to pieces; tear to tatters, tear piecemeal, tear limb from limb; divellicate[obs3]; skin &c. 226; disintegrate, dismember, disbranch[obs3], disband; disperse &c. 73; dislocate, disjoint; break up; mince; comminute &c. (pulverize) 330; apportion &c. 786. part, part company; separate, leave. Adj. disjoined &c. v.; discontinuous &c. 70; multipartite[obs3], abstract; disjunctive; secant; isolated &c. v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... nightmare of the Revolution, and the Kings of Europe had agreed to conquer and dismember her, there arose a dark-faced man in the tribune of the French Congress. He was a man of terrible personal power and magnetism. Hope must have cradled him in his babyhood. He hurled a defiance at Europe that fairly shook France to a delirium ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... neutral—I can deal with these Russians and Prussians single-handed. Metternich stated plainly that the time in which Austria could be neutral was past; that the situation of Europe at large must be considered. Napoleon insinuated that he would be happy to dismember Prussia, and give half her territories to Austria. Metternich replied that his government was resolved to be gained by no share in the spoils of others; that events had proved the impossibility of a steadfast peace, unless the sovereigns of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... would inevitably have entailed another conflict in no long time. In the interest of slavery the rebels have drawn the sword; let slavery perish by the sword. In the interest of slavery they have attempted to overthrow the National Government and to dismember the national domain; let slavery be overthrown to maintain the Government and to preserve the integrity of the nation. Let the cause of the war perish with the war. Not until slavery is extinguished can there be a lasting peace; for not until then can the conditions ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... awhile, I rode back to where I had killed the last. Already several birds of prey were hovering about. I scared them off, however, by my shouts; and then passing the bridle of my horse round my arm, I began in a very unscientific way to dismember the noble beast I had killed. I did not like the employment; at the same time, it was necessary to secure the meat. I had been for some time thus employed, when I heard the sound of wings close above me, and looking up, saw, with a feeling ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... your royal gratitudes With all the benefits my empire yields; And, were the sinews of th' imperial seat So knit and strengthen'd as when Bajazeth, My royal lord and father, fill'd the throne, Whose cursed fate [97] hath so dismember'd it, Then should you see this thief of Scythia, This proud usurping king of Persia, Do us such honour and supremacy, Bearing the vengeance of our father's wrongs, As all the world should blot his [98] dignities Out ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to the political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself to-day, and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of all Europe. Anarchy and disorder reigned from one end of the empire to the other. The Osmanli race, bred on conquest alone, proved good for nothing when conquest failed. It naturally therefore came to pass when Sobieski, who saved Christianity ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... impostor after impostor appeared claiming the imperial purple; but the empress held her own easily, and suppressed each successive rebellion without difficulty, until Pugatscheff appeared at the head of the Cossacks, and threatened to hurl her from her throne, and dismember the empire. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... its members. "One baffled collector," said a highly entertaining London journal recently, "who thought that he had succeeded in coaxing a specimen into a pail, had the mortification of seeing it dismember itself at the last moment, and asserts that the eye which is placed at the end of a limb gave a perceptible wink as he ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... stretched a tarpaulin above it to shelter us from the fierce heat. Three of our number were then despatched to secure all the green stuff they could for decorative purposes, and as the good people of De Aar were quite ready to give us some of their scanty flowers and allow us to dismember their shrubs, our envoys returned with armfuls of material. The outside of the train and the surface of the table were gaily decorated, and two photographs of her Majesty which we had cut out of magazines were framed in leaves and flowers and ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... have to go on without me. I cannot dismember my whole office organization; but James Wintermuth is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and when Silas Osgood and Company resign the Guardian—some one else ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... dismember the carcase was a matter of little difficulty to these hunters, who were all expert butchers. They had just completed the work, and were congratulating each other on this accession of veal to the larder when a shot was heard in ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne

... for open robbery. The great Merchant Nation, gaining foothold in the Orient, finds a continual necessity for extending its dominion by arms, and subjugates India. The great Royalties and Despotisms, without a plea, partition among themselves a Kingdom, dismember Poland, and prepare to wrangle over the dominions of the Crescent. To maintain the balance of power is a plea for the obliteration of States. Carthage, Genoa, and Venice, commercial Cities only, must acquire territory ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe, as governments. I think indeed it is to-day the real, heartfelt wish of all the nations ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... shown that Antony succumbed in the famous war not because, mad with love, he abandoned the command in the midst of the battle, but because his armies revolted and abandoned him when they understood what he had not dared declare to them openly: that he meant to dismember the Empire of Rome to create the new Empire of Alexandria. The future Augustus conquered at Actium without effort, merely because the national sentiment of the soldiery, outraged by the unforeseen revelation of Antony's treason, turned against the man who ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero



Words linked to "Dismember" :   divide, take apart, separate, discerp, kill, dismemberment



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