Other forms: separated, separating, separates
To separate things is to put them apart from each other. Separating the whites from the coloureds before a wash, separating two dogs that have started something, separating an egg into yolk and white.
It is an adjective as well, and the two are said differently: the verb ends like eight (SEP-a-rate), the adjective flattens to SEP-rit — we sleep in separate rooms. A couple who separate stop living together without being divorced, and that stage is called a separation. The verb takes FROM: keep the raw chicken separate from everything else on the counter. It is also among the most misspelled words in English — there is a rat in the middle of sepaRATe, and no e. And separate is not divide: you divide a cake into six, you separate the twins who were fighting over it.
1verbseparateTo move or keep things or people apart from each other.~2%
“The teachers had to separate the two boys in the corridor.”
2verbdivideTo divide into parts, or to come apart into parts.~2%
“The cream separates from the milk if you leave the bottle standing.”
3verbstopTo stop living together as a couple.~2%
“They separated after twelve years and stayed on speaking terms.”
4adjectivedistinctNot joined to another and not shared with it; different.~94%
“The children have separate rooms now and the house is quieter.”
synonyms: distinct, individual
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin sēparō, 'to separate', is built from sē- and parō, and behind it lies the Proto-Indo-European root *per-, 'to bring forward'. English borrowed it in the Middle Ages as separaten, and it pushed out the older native word scēadan, which survives today as shed. Sever is the very same Latin verb arriving by another road, which is why the two mean nearly the same thing.
Proto-Indo-European
*per- — produce, procure, bring forward, bring forth
Latin
sēparātus
Middle English
separaten — to separate
English, today
separate
Built from
From Middle English separaten (“to separate”), from separat + -en, from Latin sēparātus, perfect passive participle of sēparō (“to separate”) (see -ate), from sē- + parō, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European per- (“produce, procure, bring forward, bring forth”). Displaced Middle English scheden, from Old English scēadan (whence English shed). Doublet of sever, also derived from the same Latin verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA