Definition of "anatomize" []

• To dissect (an animal or other organism) to study the structure and relation of the parts. (verb-transitive)
• To analyze in minute detail: "Pynchon is the devil who went beyond the grave to anatomize the remains of the modern soul” ( Josephine Hendin). See Synonyms at analyze. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers, all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and far better qualified than I am to "anatomize" his writings, and "see what bred about his heart.""
• "Remainder doesn't pretend to anatomize the human mind, translating its ineffable qualities into sensible prose, as so much middling psychological realism post-Joyce and post-Woolf generally settles for."
• "Easy to appeal to but hard to anatomize and harder to practice intelligently, there are honorable loyalties, but there are also stupid ones, and destructive ones, and it is particularly self-righteous and futile to stress it in a relationship that involves careers, talent and business."