sunder
English
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈsʌndɚ/
Audio (UK) (file) - Rhymes: -ʌndə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
From Middle English sunder, from Old English sundor- (“separate, different”), from Proto-Germanic *sundraz (“isolated, particular, alone”), from Proto-Indo-European *snter-, *seni-, *senu-, *san- (“apart, without, for oneself”). Cognate with Old Saxon sundar (“particular, special”), Dutch zonder (“without”), German sonder- (“special”), German sondern (“separate, set apart”), Old Norse sundr (“separate”), Danish sønder (“apart, asunder”), Latin sine (“without”).
Adjective
Derived terms
Etymology 2
From Middle English sundren (“to separate, part, divide”), from Old English sundrian (“to separate, split, part, divide”), from Proto-Germanic *sundrōną (“to separate”), from Proto-Indo-European *sen(e)- (“separate, without”). Cognate with Scots sinder, sunder (“to separate, divide, split up”), Dutch zonderen (“to isolate”), German sondern (“to separate”), Swedish söndra (“to divide”). More at sundry.
Verb
sunder (third-person singular simple present sunders, present participle sundering, simple past and past participle sundered)
- (transitive) To break or separate or to break apart, especially with force.
- (intransitive) To part, separate.
- 1881 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Severed Selves, lines 8-9
- Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas: —
- Such are we now.
- 1881 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Severed Selves, lines 8-9
- (UK, dialect, dated, transitive) To expose to the sun and wind.
- 1788, William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Yorkshire:
- Where a fair opportunity offers, and the grass is perfectly dry, the hipples are sundered; that is, broken out into beds in the usual manner, turned, and again got up into cocklets, of such size as the state of dryness requires.
- 1941, The Queensland Agricultural and Pastoral Handbook, page 82:
- Except under abnormal conditions, protection can be afforded to a field by cutting a strip half a chain in width all round the field, with a reaper and binder for preference, when the crop is in the best condition for hay, and then ploughing or sunder-cutting the stubble.
- 2010, Stony Stern, Run Past The Hunter, page 143:
- The trees and shrubs all around us began to show the signs of death; dried branches, leafless gray and molding wood. The ground here was as hard as stone, the dirt and dust dry as bone sundered in the desert scorch.
- 2013, Thomas Glave, Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh, page 165:
- The world, a good deal of it, sundered, scorched.
-
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
|
Noun
sunder (plural sunders)
- a separation into parts; a division or severance
- 1939, Alfred Edward Housman, Additional Poems, VII, lines 2-4
- He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
- I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
- And went with half my life about my ways.
- 1939, Alfred Edward Housman, Additional Poems, VII, lines 2-4
Derived terms
See also
Old English
Etymology
From Proto-Germanic *sundraz, whence also Old High German suntar, Old Norse sundr.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈsun.der/
Adverb
sunder
Synonyms
- ġedǣledlīċe
Derived terms
- onsundrum (“singly, separately, apart: privately: especially, in sunder”)
- sunderanweald m (“monarchy”)
- sunderfolgoþ m (“private office”)
- sunderfrēodōm, sunderfrēols m (“privilege”)
- sunderlīpes (“separately”)
- sundermǣlum (“separately, singly”)
- sundermēd f (“private meadow”)
- sunderstōw f (“special place”)
Related terms
References
- John R. Clark Hall (1916), “sunder”, in A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York: Macmillan
- Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller (1898), “sundor”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.