Separate means to set apart or divide things that were together. When you separate your colored clothes from your white clothes before doing laundry, you're sorting them into different groups. When a teacher separates two students who keep talking during class, she moves them away from each other.

The word can describe physical distance, like when you separate puzzle pieces by color to make sorting easier, or more abstract divisions, like when you try to separate facts from opinions in a news article. Things that are separate exist independently or aren't connected: separate bedrooms, separate ideas, separate containers for different ingredients.

You can also use separate as an adjective to describe things that are distinct or apart. A house might have a separate entrance for guests. Two friends might go to separate schools. Scientists work to keep their personal feelings separate from their research.

Notice that separate differs from words like “divide” or “split.” When you separate things, you're often just moving them apart or keeping them distinct. When you divide or split something, you're usually breaking a single thing into pieces. You might separate students into groups, but you'd divide a pizza into slices.