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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
detach
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a detached garage (=not joined to a house)
▪ The house benefits from a large detached garage.
detachedespecially BrE (= not joined to another house)
▪ It is a modern detached property with five bedrooms.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
more
▪ Her comments were considered especially important since, not being quite so involved with the work, they were perhaps more detached.
▪ They are bigger, richer, greedier, more detached now.
■ NOUN
group
▪ After a few minutes one of the men detached himself from the group and walked after Fred at a smart pace.
▪ Men, women and babies are detached in small groups or bunched together in fantastic clusters, gesticulating madly.
▪ The Station Chief detached himself from the group.
▪ The mood somber on the grassy knolls, I stood, feeling like an observer, detached from the group, defeated.
▪ After a while Harbury and Linda detached themselves from a group and carried their drinks over to join Rain.
▪ Two vaguely serpentine exters detached themselves from the group.
semi
▪ We parked in a pleasant street, lined with trees and filled with detached and semi-detached suburban villas.
■ VERB
become
▪ Rattles develop and pieces of trim become detached.
▪ Cooley does not become defensive and detached.
▪ His fingers became fat maggots and detached themselves from his doughnut hands.
▪ All my resolve during my walks along the Seine to become detached from my family vanished in an instant.
▪ But power, by the minute, is becoming detached from the public support that gives it meaning.
▪ A regimental musician who had become detached from his unit, he followed in the wake of the attack as a spectator.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Please detach the last section of this form, fill it in, and return it to us.
▪ The control unit can be detached from the base.
▪ The tires on the toy cars may detach and become a hazard to small children.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Death, with which they lived so intimately, could not be detached from their lives as an object of contemplation.
▪ Eventually, if the body lay undisturbed for long enough, the skin might even detach itself from the body.
▪ Health care needs to be detached from them and funded from general taxes.
▪ Men, women and babies are detached in small groups or bunched together in fantastic clusters, gesticulating madly.
▪ Now fill in the application form on pages 3 and 4 and detach these Notes.
▪ She fiddled around for a while, and cursed and muttered before she managed to get one detached.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Detach

Detach \De*tach"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Detached; p. pr. & vb. n. Detaching.] [F. d['e]tacher (cf. It. distaccare, staccare); pref. d['e] (L. dis) + the root found also in E. attach. See Attach, and cf. Staccato.]

  1. To part; to separate or disunite; to disengage; -- the opposite of attach; as, to detach the coats of a bulbous root from each other; to detach a man from a leader or from a party.

  2. To separate for a special object or use; -- used especially in military language; as, to detach a ship from a fleet, or a company from a regiment.

    Syn: To separate; disunite; disengage; sever; disjoin; withdraw; draw off. See Detail.

Detach

Detach \De*tach"\, v. i. To push asunder; to come off or separate from anything; to disengage.

[A vapor] detaching, fold by fold, From those still heights.
--Tennyson.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
detach

1680s, from French détacher "to detach, untie," from Old French destachier, from des- "apart" + attachier "attach" (see attach). Related: Detached; detaching.

Wiktionary
detach

vb. 1 To take apart from; to take off. 2 (context military English) To separate for a special object or use.

WordNet
detach
  1. v. cause to become detached or separated; take off; "detach the skin from the chicken before you eat it" [ant: attach]

  2. military use: separate (a small unit) from a larger, especially for a special assignment; "detach a regiment"

  3. come to be detached; "His retina detached and he had to be rushed into surgery" [syn: come off, come away] [ant: attach]

Usage examples of "detach".

Commodore had reformed the squadron into a single line abreast, except for the pair detached ahead.

Prince was negotiating with Washington, while his detached scouts sought far and wide over the Eastern States looking for anything resembling an aeronautic park.

Jesus, aiming to detach the mind from this world by concentrating on the horrors of hell, the saving truth of the gospel story, and the example of Christ.

They were employed by his agency, but he frequently sent them off on detached duty all over the country, to raid or spy in every known political or ameliorative gathering.

Esther Summerson is a lady, but she is so much besides that her ladyhood does not detach itself from her sainthood and her angelhood, so as to be conspicuous--if, indeed, conspicuousness may be properly predicated of the quality of a lady.

Count Janos Zichy and Count Antal Sigray, both of the opposition party, propagated a Christian Democratic program and demanded that the war be ended immediately on our side and that we detach ourselves from the Third Reich.

The result was that when the newcomer left the hotel with the cicerone, a man detached himself from the rest of the idlers, and without having been seen by the traveler, and appearing to excite no attention from the guide, followed the stranger with as much skill as a Parisian police agent would have used.

Machen arrived, because his cell was detached from its position at a bay on the farthest spar of Idlewild and towed around the side of the station by Arachno service personnel, at the ends of their long lines.

The arsonist propped the detached pane against the wall carefully, well out of his way, and reached into the first tackle bag.

While the enlisted survivors were being released, the only officers still free were such as Lieutenant Busby, those who had been on detached duty when the attack came.

Mareschal Saxe, having amused the allies with marches and counter-marches, at length detached count Lowendahl with six-and-thirty thousand men to besiege Bergen-op-Zoom, the strongest fortification of Dutch Brabant, the favourite work of the famous engineer Coehorn, never conquered, and generally esteemed invincible.

In the case of friction between two solid bodies, this may go so far that particles of matter are completely detached from the cohesive whole.

The cooled cake is pressed between folds of linen, and the paraffin scale detached and weighed.

The decaying forms of Deep Fields reared up in response to the unaccustomed noise, detached arms and legs, wheels and gears, spinning and cavorting, tumbling and twirling in a Danse Macabre such as Deep Fields had never seen.

With hands dripping gore, the crowd fought over detached plates of armor, a boot, a triblaster with a shattered receiver and delaminated muzzle.