Pierre Pourquery, of Boston Consulting Group, says it is not uncommon for investors to break their exotic purchases into smaller pieces in order to feed them into their risk-management systems.

ECONOMIST: Securitisation

Mr. COLE: Of course another option ultimately for the owners of Chrysler is to break it up into pieces.

NPR: Lower Costs in UAW Contract Seen as Key for GM

The corporate entities for which these people work also tend to break up into smaller pieces or get merged into larger ones.

FORBES: Women Lawyers: Impressive Successes and Babies at 50

Traveling through the sky at a few kilometers per second, friction with the air can cause the meteor to break up into several pieces.

CNN: Meteor shows why it is crucial to keep an eye on the sky

However, without a natural way to untangle itself from the majoritarian knot in which we have become ensnarled, the system probably has to fray and fracture at the periphery and eventually break into pieces and fall away from the center before it will be possible to restore liberty, justice and prosperity for all.

FORBES: The Myriad Infirmities of Democracy

Instruments are passed through the scope to break up the stone into small pieces that can be urinated out.

CNN: What can I do for kidney stones?

If you know what your aims are you can begin to break each aspect down into manageable pieces which will seem more achievable.

CNN: Management Masterclass

American officials are reluctant to go nuclear and break them up, not least because the task of splitting them into pieces small enough to pose no danger would be horribly messy.

ECONOMIST: Wall Street's new shape

But unlike the other Maiden Lane assets already sold by the Fed, the Triaxx CDO is more of a notorious villain of the 2008 financial crisis and may present more of a challenge for banks looking to break it up and sell it off in pieces.

FORBES: The Fed, Wall Street Prepare to Unleash Crisis 2.0

What if it was possible to break a complex piece of machinery into a thousand pieces and then, at some predetermined moment, have the machine put itself back together again?

NEWYORKER: In the Air

The idea was that new chief executive Ian Read would break the company up into five pieces so that the drug division would be able to grow from a smaller base.

FORBES: Pfizer Spinoffs May Be Prelude To A Bigger Breakup, Analyst Says