dissects

/daɪˈsɛkts/

verb

  1. Cuts apart a body, plant, or other organism carefully in order to study its structure.

    B2

    transitive; third person singular of 'dissect'; regular: dissect, dissected, dissected

    • "The biology teacher dissects a frog in front of the class."B1
    • "The pathologist carefully dissects the tissue to determine the cause of death."C1

  2. Examines something very closely and in great detail, breaking it into parts in order to understand or criticize it.

    C1

    transitive; often figurative

    • "The film critic dissects every scene of the director's latest movie."C1
    • "The article dissects the government's economic policy."C1

Common mistakes

  • dessect→dissect

    The word is spelled with a double 's' after the 'i': dis-sect.

  • The students dissected about the poem for an hour.→The students dissected the poem for an hour.

    'Dissect' is a transitive verb and takes a direct object without a preposition.

  • dissect into pieces→dissect

    "Dissect" already means to cut apart, so "into pieces" is redundant.

Collocations

dissect a frogdissect the datadissect an argumentdissect in detaildissect piece by piecedissect a specimendissect the textdissect a problem

Word family

dissectdissecteddissectingdissectiondissector