sundering

Verb

sunder (third-person singular simple present sunders, present participle sundering, simple past and past participle sundered)

1. (transitive) To break or separate or to break apart, especially with force.
   • Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep, (some thirty feet or more,) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish.1842, Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum
2. (intransitive) To part, separate.
   • Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas: —
     Such are we now.1881 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Severed Selves, lines 8-9
3. (UK, dated, dialectal, transitive) To expose to the sun and wind.
   • 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.1788, William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Yorkshire

See all 5 meanings of sunder