English

Noun

disassimilation ‎(plural disassimilations)

1. (obsolete, biochemistry) catabolism (metabolism with the release of energy)
   • 1851 March 1, Buffalo Medical Journal, volume 6, number 10, page 584:

     It shows that the brain is not important to the proper performance of the functions of assimilation and disassimilation—or those of organic life.

   • 1894, The Dental Register, volume 48, page 198:

     His experiments show “that about four-fifths of our disassimilations are the result of transformations within the body, comparable to the oxidation of alcohol, and that the remaining one-fifth of the disassimilations are formed at the expense of the living tissues themselves, free of all demands on foreign oxygen."

   • 1907, William Henry Howell, A Text-book of physiology, page 342:

     There is a white-black substance which when acted upon by the visible rays of light undergoes disassimilation and sets up nerve impulses that arouse in the brain the sensation of white.

2. The act of becoming less assimilated or integrated, particularly of ethnic groups.
   • 2004, Joel Pfister, Individuality incorporated: Indians and the multicultural modern:

     Judging from the autobiographical texts of these three authors, Natives often mixed assimilation with a degree of disassimilation.

   • 2007, Kristofer Allerfeldt, The Progressive Era in the USA, 1890-1921, page 143:

     At this point, "a process of disassimilation begins. The arts, life, and ideals of the nationality become central and paramount; ethnic and national differences change in status from disadvantages to distinctions."

   • 2013, Shaul Magid, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society:

     I see Jewish Renewal as a late twentieth-century articulation of what I called the second stage of disassimilation of American Jews, its constructive/ illustrative phase.

Related terms

• disassimilate

Antonyms

• assimilation