vbl. sb. [f. SUNDER v. + -ING1.] The action of the verb SUNDER; parting, separation.
c. 1250. Gen. & Ex., 458. Of merke, and kinde, and helde, & ble, sundring and samening taȝte he.
1401. Pol. Poems (Rolls), II. 91. Heresie … in oure langage meneth sunderyng and partyng.
1435. Misyn, Fire of Love, II. ix. 91. Þe knot vnlousyd of drawynge frenschyp sal comforth heuynes of bodily sondyrynge.
1530. Palsgr., 272/2. Sondring of a thyng, remotion.
1582–8. Hist. James VI. (1804), 126. That was the caus of thair suddaine sindering.
1674. N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 99. That would partake of sundering, if it were not the least that can be.
1838. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xxv. (1866), II. 22. Under Division … we understand in general the sundering of a whole into its parts.
1863. W. Phillips, Speeches, vi. 121. The sundering of the Methodist and Baptist denominations.
1865. Geikie, Scen. & Geol. Scot., vi. 121. The profound concavity of these valleys cannot … arise from the sundering of the sides of a fissure.
So Sundering ppl. a., that sunders.
1870. Morris, Earthly Par., II. III. 332. A new lonely pain, Like sundering death, smote on her.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights & Insights, xxx. 292. Myriad sparkles of ever sundering atoms.
1885. E. Arnold, Secr. Death, 23. Wide asunder stand Wisdom and ignorance, in sundering ways They lead mankind!
