Definition of "comminute" [com•mi•nute]

• To reduce to powder; pulverize. (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.

• "For here again it is because the mouth fails to perform its office and fails even more completely-for birds have no teeth at all, nor any instrument whatsoever with which to comminute or grind down their food-it is,"
• "Again in some multiple injuries, pain was only felt in the more sensitive of the regions implicated; thus a patient in whom a bullet (Martini) traversed the arm and chest emerging in the neck to again enter the chin and comminute the mandible, only felt pain in the chin and first realised that he had been wounded elsewhere when he undressed."
• "The stomach is well muscled and churns the food about, helping to comminute it, but it can not take the place of the teeth."