Dismantling

How to spell dismantling

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dismantling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dismantling mean?

1. verbTaking something apart piece by piece, or progressively breaking up a system or structure.

Dismantling in a sentence

• The crew spent the morning dismantling the scaffolding around the building.

• Dismantling the old engine was the only way to find the cracked piston.

Where does dismantling come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'dismantle', which English took from the Old French 'desmanteler' in the late 1500s. That French verb was built from the prefix 'des-', meaning 'apart' or 'reverse', and 'manteler', meaning 'to cloak' or 'to cover', from 'mantel', a cloak (itself from the Latin 'mantellum', a covering or mantle). So the literal idea was to strip something of its protective cloak or covering; in early use it specifically meant to tear down the fortifications and walls that 'cloaked' a castle or town. From that military sense of pulling down defences, the meaning broadened to taking any structure or machine apart, and later to breaking up abstract things like an organisation or a policy. The everyday word 'mantle', a covering layer, is the close relative that explains why the spelling keeps that silent-feeling '-tle' before the '-ing'.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, reversing)
• mantle (cloak, covering, from Latin mantellum)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)