Definition of "dissect" []

• To cut apart or separate (tissue), especially for anatomical study. (verb-transitive)
• To examine, analyze, or criticize in minute detail: dissected the plan afterward to learn why it had failed. 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.

• "Those titles dissect companies that exhibit an attribute -- long-term financial success, say -- and then describe the behaviors they use to achieve that result."
• "More to the point, readers who reject all approaches to fiction that go beyond its potential to entertain or provide pleasure are not thereby safeguarding the purity of reading, nor are readers who attempt to in one way or another to "dissect" works of fiction violating that purity."
• "But I can say with confidence that political strategists who cannot either construct or "dissect" the emotional structure of an ad like this present a far greater danger to the Democratic Party and its values than all President Bush's appointees to the federal bench."