compartmentalize
Other forms: compartmentalized; compartmentalizing; compartmentalizes
When you separate something into smaller sections or categories, you compartmentalize it. Sometimes people compartmentalize their feelings in order to understand them better.
Someone who compartmentalizes his own life tends to sort its different parts, keeping work life completely removed from recreation or family life, for example. A college student might find that a good way to prepare for a history exam is to compartmentalize each decade and study them separately. The verb compartmentalize comes from the noun compartment, itself from the Old French compartiment, "part partitioned off," from the Late Latin compartiri, "to divide."
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separate into isolated compartments or categories
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Vocabulary lists containing compartmentalize
In this memoir, the author reveals how she and her twin sister survived the physical and emotional effects of a rare disfiguring condition called Crouzon Syndrome.
Layla Amin thinks of herself as a typical American teenager. But when Muslim-Americans like Layla and her family are forcibly relocated to internment camps, the seventeen-year-old decides to fight for her freedom.