split up

verb, adj, noun — 5 senses

split up

verbalso spelled split-up

1

Idiomatic Cease to be together, break apart from the group.

Of a group of people

After she left to go travelling, my girlfriend and I split up.
The soldiers split up into smaller squadrons to search the building.

2

separate, disassociate, cause to come apart.

The brothers never behaved in class when they were together, so we had to split them up for the exam.

split up

adj

1

Divided or separated.

2

Obsolete, Slang Of a person: having long legs.

He should preferably be tall, weighty, well split up in the legs (especially from the hip-joint to the knee), neatly turned at the knee and ankle joints […]1913, S. A. Mussabini, Charles Ranson, The Complete Athletic Trainer, page 17:

split-up

noun

Etymology Deverbal from split up.

1

A break-up.

My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:[…]1995, Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, London: Victor Gollancz, →ISBN, page 9:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for split up and split-up.