discrete

Definition

Separate; distinct; individual; non-continuous.

Etymology

From Old French discret, from Latin discrētus, past participle of discernō (“divide”), from dis- + cernō (“sift”). Doublet of discreet.

Example Sentences

• "a government with three discrete divisions"
• "There are two laws discrete, / Not reconciled,— / Law for man, and law for thing; / The last builds town and fleet, / But it runs wild, / And doth the man unking."
• "But analysis, penetrating beneath the fact of Sense in search of its ideal factors, declares that this mass of marble is something very different from what it appears : its seeming continuity is broken up into discrete molecules, separated from each other as the stars in the Milky Way are separated ; and its seeming homogeneity is resolved into heterogeneous substances, which are themselves in all probability composite."