dissimilation

Imagine a beautiful mosaic—lots of tiles working together to make one picture. Now imagine that two tiles that used to match start changing in different directions, so they no longer look alike. The picture may still be there, but the similarity is gone. That’s the basic idea behind dissimilation: things that were similar become less similar.

You’ll most often see dissimilation in *linguistics. It’s the name for a sound change where two similar sounds in a word become less alike, often because repeating the same sound can be hard to say. For instance, Latin purpura eventually became English purple*: the two “r” sounds didn’t both survive as “r.”

People sometimes use the word more loosely for groups or systems drifting apart—one movement splitting into smaller groups, or a team losing its unity—but that use is less common. In any case, it points in the opposite direction of assimilation: instead of becoming more alike, things move away from each other.

Dissimilation is a process where similar elements become less alike. In everyday terms, it’s a move away from sameness—two things that used to “match” start to differ. In modern English, the word is most at home in linguistics; other uses exist, but they’re less common and often feel technical or metaphorical.

In *linguistics, dissimilation refers to a change in sound where similar sounds within a word become less alike, making pronunciation easier. For example, the Latin word "purpura" (which contains two "r" sounds) eventually became "purple" in English—the repeated sounds dissimilated* into an "r" and an "l" to avoid repetition.

In *biology* (especially in older or more technical writing), dissimilation can refer to the breakdown of complex organic compounds in an organism to release energy—roughly what many textbooks now call catabolism. It’s essentially how your body breaks down food to fuel your cells.

Outside science, the term is sometimes borrowed to describe people, groups, or institutions that stop acting as a unit and start pulling apart. A coalition might split into competing sides, or a community that once felt blended might become more separate over time. This is usually a metaphorical extension, not the word’s main home.

You can even use it metaphorically: "After years of working together seamlessly, the team began to dissimilate following the departure of their leader." This means they lost their cohesion and started operating independently.

So whether it’s sounds changing in a language, (in some biological contexts) energy being released from food, or groups drifting apart, dissimilation is about similarity weakening over time. It’s movement away from likeness—often described as the opposite of assimilation.