Other forms: dismantled, dismantling, dismantles
To dismantle something is to take it apart piece by piece — a machine, a scaffold, a stage set after the last night. The word implies method: things are removed in order, and often they could be put back.
It is used just as often about systems and organisations, and there the tone is political: dismantle the welfare state, dismantle a regulator, dismantle an argument. That figurative use is now probably the commoner one in print. Compare demolish, which is violent and leaves rubble, and disassemble, which is the neutral technical term. Dismantle sits between them: deliberate, thorough, and usually contested.
1verbdismantleTo take a machine or structure apart piece by piece.
“It took two days to dismantle the scaffolding.”
synonyms: take apart, disassemble, strip down
2verbgraduallyTo gradually get rid of a system or organisation.
“The new government set about dismantling the agency.”
dismantle is a way of taking apart.
Also accepted in games: take apart
Middle French desmanteler meant to strip the walls from a fortress — literally to take off its mantle, its cloak. The word began as an act of war against a building and softened into an act of engineering against a machine.
Middle French
desmanteler
English, today
dismantle
Built from
From Middle French desmanteler, itself from des- (“dis-”), mantel (“coat”) + -er. by surface analysis, dis- + mantle. Compare typologically uncloak, reveal, unmask.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA