Divide

How to spell divide

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce divide

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does divide mean?

1. verbTo separate something into parts, groups, or shares.
2. nounA significant gap, boundary, or difference that separates two groups or regions.

Divide in a sentence

• verb

  The manager will divide the workload evenly across the team.

• noun

  The report examined the growing digital divide between rich and poor households.

• verb

  They decided to divide the inheritance among the four siblings.

• noun

  A sharp economic divide runs through the two halves of the city.

Where does divide come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb dividere, which meant to force apart, to split, or to distribute, formed from the prefix dis- meaning 'apart' joined to a root tied to separating or sundering. In Roman usage it covered everything from cutting land into parcels to sharing out money among heirs. English took it up in the late 1300s, partly through Old French diviser, and it carried both the literal sense of cutting into pieces and the mathematical sense of splitting a quantity into equal shares. The same Latin root sits inside related words such as 'division', 'individual' (literally something that cannot be divided), and 'device'. The spelling stays reassuringly regular: a long 'i' in both syllables and a single 'd' in the middle, so the main trap is simply not doubling letters where Latin never had them.

How the word is built

• di- (apart)
• vide (from videre stem of dividere: to separate, distribute)