Word of the Day Archive
Friday March 15, 2002
sunder \SUN-dur\ , transitive verb:
1. To break apart; to separate; to divide; to sever.
intransitive verb:
1. To become parted, disunited, or severed.
As the issue of slavery threatened to sunder the United States, President Abraham Lincoln, using biblical language, warned that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
-- Morris B. Abraham, "Using the bully pulpit at the United Nations", Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 20, 1997
Momentous business was at hand, as the last colonial ties with England were about to be sundered, and Madison was compelled to take his stand for both a separation from the mother country and the erection of a republican form of government.
-- Robert A. Rutland, James Madison and the Search for Nationhood
Their romance was sundered by World War II, and she scarcely saw Tito again until 1953.
-- "Tribute: For 40 Years Prima Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn Created a Soaring Legend of Grace and Beauty", People, March 11, 1991
Sunder is from Old English sundrian.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for sunder
