fall apartverb

• 1

  To disintegrate, to break into pieces.

  • My old briefcase is falling apart. I'll have to buy a new one.
  • England's World Cup dreams fell apart under a French onslaught on a night when their shortcomings were brutally exposed at the quarter-final stage.
• 2

  To be emotionally in crisis.

  • As a result of being addicted to heroin, she was falling apart.
  • At first I used to look at so many of us having fights or crying or staggering around messed up somehow and think, "God, are we fucked up!" but now what I think is that it was a safe place to fall apart in — one of the few. You didn't have to be politically correct or well-behaved; you could be wild or angry or miserable.
• 3

  To separate.

  • And when my care was moſt, by Gods pꝛouidence onely, by the burning aſunder of our ſpꝛitſaile-yard with ropes and ſaile, and the ropes about the ſpꝛitſaile-yard of the Carack, whereby we were faſt intangled, we fell apart, with burning of ſome of our ſailes which we had then on booꝛd.
  • Again the mountains fall apart, and in a wide basin of corn-land and pasture lies the bourgade of La Thuile.