dismantle

From Middle French desmanteler, itself from des- (“dis-”), mantel (“coat”) + -er (verbal suffix).

• IPA^(key): /dɪsˈmæntəl/
• (UK) IPA^(key): [dɪsˈmæntʰəɫ]

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (Cockney) IPA^(key): [dɪsˈmænʔəɫ]
• (US) IPA^(key): [dɪsˈmæ̃nɾɫ̩], [dɪsˈmæ̃nɫ̩]
• Rhymes: -æntəl

dismantle (third-person singular simple present dismantles, present participle dismantling, simple past and past participle dismantled)

1. (transitive) To take apart; to disassemble; to take to pieces.
   • 2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎^[1], volume 188, number 23, page 19:

     In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax.

   • 2025 March 18, Samuel Moyn, “Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 March 2025:

     This story of how American originality lost its way is arresting and well told. On an alternate timeline without Donald Trump in office dismantling the American scientific establishment and Elon Musk kneecapping the American state, it might have been the manifesto of a new politics.

2. (transitive) To disprove a discourse, claim or argument.
   • 2001, Jeffrey Morgan, “The Rhetoric of Hate”, in Learning for Justice, number 20:

     If we can dismantle hate rhetoric and explain why it is, in fact, illogical, is the language no longer dangerous?

3. (transitive, originally) To divest, strip of dress or covering.
   • c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […], published 1608, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     This is most ſtrange, that ſhe, who even but now
     Was your beſt object, the argument of your praiſe,
     Balme of your age, moſt beſt, moſt deereſt,
     Should in this trice of time commit a thing
     So monſtrous, to diſmantell ſo many foulds of fauour, […]

4. (transitive) To remove fittings or furnishings from.

• “dismantle” in Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: Based on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 7th edition, Springfield, Mass.: G[eorge] & C[harles] Merriam, 1963 (1967 printing), →OCLC.

• dentalism