The fog thinned and came apart
Does "Come apart" mean "dissipate"?
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3Sometimes when fog is lifting it gives the impression of "falling apart" as some patches become clear quicker than others, giving a "fragmented" appearance. In some (but not all) contexts, to fall apart, to dissipate, to clear, scatter, diffuse,... are all more or less interchangeable - but that doesn't mean they "mean the same" in general. Exact context is everything.– FumbleFingersOct 4 at 0:02
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3Hello ben_mb and welcome to ELL! This is a good question, but we don't allow questions to include images of words. People who use image readers can't read the words in images, and people searching for words in your image won't be able to find them. Please edit your question and type in the words you need to include and remove the image. Thanks!– gotube ♦Oct 4 at 4:35
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Yes, "came apart" means "dissipated" here. FumbleFingers correctly mentioned that it does have a different connotation, but they are synonyms when used to refer to fog.– BigMistakeOct 5 at 2:57
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2 Answers
Yes, "came apart" means "dissipated" here. FumbleFingers correctly mentioned that it does have a bit of a different connotation, but they are synonyms when used to refer to fog (not necessarily when used elsewhere).
This is poetic, but not overly so. It is good writing. Everyone understands what this means, and it helps paint a more vivid mental picture.
We don't normally refer to fog as "coming apart". Google Ngrams has no hits. So either this author is being poetic, or isn't great at writing.
I don't recommend using "come apart" in regular speech to describe what fog does.
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3Yes, it's usually an object constructed of several parts that 'comes apart'. Oct 4 at 8:11
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2Obviously the usage is relatively uncommon and it's "figurative, literary, poetic", so you wouldn't expect it to be common enough to show on an NGram chart. But here's another perfectly competent published author with When she reached the wall, she could see that the fog came apart as it rounded the sheep pens. This answer falsely implies there's something wrong, defective about the usage - but in a suitable context, it could well be called great writing. Oct 4 at 12:13
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1...and another: All around her the fog was coming apart ... as the mist burned off. Oct 4 at 12:17
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@FumbleFingers Never said there's something wrong or defective. Where did you get that?– gotube ♦Oct 4 at 23:09
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either this author is being poetic, or isn't great at writing. And it was you who referred to the source as an "author". Oct 5 at 10:44