These verbs mean to become or cause to become parted, disconnected, or disunited. Separate applies both to putting apart and to keeping apart: "In the darkness and confusion, the bands of these commanders became separated from each other" (Washington Irving).
Divide implies separation by or as if by cutting or splitting into parts or shares; the term often refers to separation into opposing or hostile groups: We divided the orange into segments. "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free" (Abraham Lincoln).
Part refers most often to the separation of closely associated persons or things: "Because ... nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us" (Emily Brontë).
Sever usually implies abruptness and force: "His head was nearly severed from his body" (H.G. Wells).
Sunder stresses violent tearing or wrenching apart: The country was sundered by civil war.
Divorce implies complete separation: "a priest and a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life" (Robert Louis Stevenson).
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