Anatomizers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. People who examine or break something down piece by piece to understand its structure ; those who cut apart bodies to study their anatomy
2. Those who take a subject apart minutely to reveal its inner workings ; persons who dissect corpses to learn how the body is built
3. Individuals who scrutinize every component of a thing closely ; practitioners who perform dissections on cadavers for anatomical study

Etymology: "Anatomizers" is the plural of "anatomizer," a noun formed from the verb "anatomize" with the agent suffix "-er," so it names one who anatomizes. The verb "anatomize" comes from "anatomy," which traces back through Latin and Greek to a sense of cutting up or dissecting. An anatomizer, then, is literally a person who cuts apart, most often a body, in order to study its parts. The plural form simply counts several such people at once. Its meaning follows directly from the verb: where "anatomize" once meant to dissect a body, it came to mean analyzing anything by breaking it into its component parts, so an anatomizer can be someone who dissects an argument, a text or a social problem as readily as a corpse.