dismemberments

Noun

dismemberment (countable and uncountable, plural dismemberments)

1. (countable) The act of dismembering.
   • The skill is shown by the neat way in which the dismemberment has been carried out. The parts have not been rudely hacked asunder, but have been separated at the joints.1911, R. Austin Freeman, chapter 13, in The Vanishing Man
2. (uncountable) The state or condition of being dismembered.
   • [I]s not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organised into Polities, into nations, and a whole coöperating Mankind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?1831, Thomas Carlyle, “Tailors”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, 3rd book, page 201
3. (countable) Removal from membership; detachment from an organization, group, etc.
   • The decision of the Supreme Court involved a dismemberment from the bar.1867, "Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Ex Parte Magruder," The American Law Register (1852-1891), vol. 15, no. 5, New Series Volume 6, (Mar.), p. 295