carve up

carve up

Verb

to divide or share out: in 1795, Poland was carved up between three empires

Noun

carve-up

the division or sharing out of something: a territorial carve-up

Thesaurus

Verb

1.

carve up - separate into parts or portions; "divide the cake into three equal parts"; "The British carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I" dissever, divide, split, split up, separate change integrity - change in physical make-up subdivide - divide into smaller and smaller pieces; "This apartment cannot be subdivided any further!" initialise, initialize, format - divide (a disk) into marked sectors so that it may store data; "Please format this disk before entering data!" sectionalise, sectionalize - divide into sections, especially into geographic sections; "sectionalize a country" triangulate - divide into triangles or give a triangular form to; "triangulate the piece of cardboard" unitise, unitize - divide (bulk material) and process as units lot - divide into lots, as of land, for example parcel - divide into parts; "The developers parceled the land" sliver, splinter - divide into slivers or splinters paragraph - divide into paragraphs, as of text; "This story is well paragraphed" canton - divide into cantons, of a country Balkanise, Balkanize - divide a territory into small, hostile states