Bisect

//baɪˈsɛkt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bisector, which divides into two equal parts.
  2. 2
    An envelope, card, or fragment thereof showing an affixed cut half of a regular issued stamp, over which one or more postal markings have been applied. Typically used in wartime when normal lower rate stamps may not be available.
Verb
  1. 1
    To cut or divide into two parts. transitive

    "The quadrennial period of games and festivals in Greece was probably arrived at by bisecting an older octennial period."

  2. 2
    cut in half or cut in two wordnet
  3. 3
    To cut or divide into two parts.; To divide an angle, line segment, or other figure into two equal parts. transitive
  4. 4
    To cut or divide into two parts.; To perform a binary search on files in source control in order to identify the specific change that introduced a bug etc. transitive

Example

More examples

"The quadrennial period of games and festivals in Greece was probably arrived at by bisecting an older octennial period."

Etymology

From bi- (“bi-, two”) + Latin secāre (“to cut”).

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.