partition
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.a thin wall or screen that divides a room into smaller areas.
n.a non-load-bearing interior wall or screen used to divide a larger space into smaller compartments.
Simple“They put up a glass partition to create a small office in the corner of the living room.”
In context“The office layout utilised movable partitions, allowing the team to reconfigure the workspace based on the requirements of each new project.”
- 02 C1 Advanced
n.the act of dividing a country into two or more separate nations.
n.the geopolitical division of a territory into two or more autonomous or independent political entities.
Simple“The partition of the country led to many families being separated by the new border.”
In context“Historians continue to debate the long-term social and economic consequences of the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent.”
SynonymsAntonyms - 03 C1 Advanced
n.a separate section of a computer's hard drive that acts like a different disk.
n.a logical division of a hard disk drive or database into distinct, independent sections.
Simple“He created a separate partition on his hard drive to install a different operating system.”
In context“The system administrator recommended creating a dedicated partition for the database to prevent log files from consuming all available disk space.”
- 04 C2 Proficiency
n.a way of splitting a set of numbers into smaller groups where every number belongs to exactly one group.
n.a decomposition of a set into non-empty, disjoint subsets whose union is the original set.
Simple“The teacher asked the students to find every possible partition of the set.”
In context“In number theory, a partition of a positive integer is a way of writing it as a sum of positive integers.”
Synonyms - 05 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to divide a room or area into smaller parts using a wall or screen.
v.to divide a space or entity into distinct parts; frequently used with the particle 'off'.
Simple“We decided to partition off a small area of the basement to use as a gym.”
In context“The builders were instructed to partition the warehouse into several smaller units suitable for light industrial use.”
UsageOften used as 'partition off' when referring to physical space.
“The organizers excluded it from the official display and placed it behind a partition outside the main exhibition area.”
“After a scramble, it broke to Lautaro, who jabbed home before scaling the partition that separates fans from the pitch behind the goal.”
Recorded c.1430, "division into shares, distinction," from Middle English particioun, from Old French particion (modern partition), from Latin partitio, partitionem (“division, portion”), from partitus, the past participle of partire (“to split (up), part(ition)”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.