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Strip vs Divest vs Denude vs Bare vs Dismantle

Stripdivestdenudebaredismantle can mean to deprive a person or thing of what clothes, furnishes, or invests him or it.

Strip stresses a pulling or tearing off rather than a laying bare, though the latter implication is frequent; it often connotes more or less violent action or complete deprivation.

Divest , in contrast to strip , does not suggest violence; it usually implies a taking away of what a person or thing has been clothed or equipped with especially as a sign of power, rank, influence, or prestige.

Therefore it often connotes an undoing or a dispossession or a degrading.

Denude implies a stripping or divesting, but distinctively it implies a resulting bareness or nakedness.

Bare , although it suggests a removal of what covers or clothes, seldom carries implications of violent or complete stripping; it is chiefly used in idiomatic phrases which imply more than the mere act; thus, to bare one’s head is to take off one’s hat usually as a sign of respect or reverence; to bare one’s sword is to unsheathe it and to have it ready for action; to bare one’s heart to another is to reveal feelings one has concealed; to bare the secrets of the grave is to disclose, often as a result of a discovery of documents, something which had been known only to persons now dead.

Dismantle is used chiefly with reference to the act of stripping a house, a building, a ship, or a complex installation (as of machinery) of its entire equipment and furnishings.