New Age? ! Latin? Middle English?

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000.   separate   SYLLABICATION: sep·a·rate

VERB: Inflected forms: sep·a·rat·ed, sep·a·rat·ing, sep·a·rates

TRANSITIVE VERB: 1a. To set or keep apart; disunite. b. To space apart; scatter: small farms that were separated one from another by miles of open land. c. To sort: separate mail by postal zones. 2. To differentiate or discriminate between; distinguish: a researcher who separated the various ethnic components of the population sample. 3. To remove from a mixture or combination; isolate. 4. To part (a couple), often by decree: She was separated from her husband last year. 5. To terminate a contractual relationship, as military service, with; discharge.

INTRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To come apart. 2. To withdraw: The state threatened to separate from the Union. 3. To part company; disperse. 4. To stop living together as spouses. 5. To become divided into components or parts: Oil and water tend to separate.

ADJECTIVE: (spr-t, sprt)1. Set or kept apart; disunited: Libraries often have a separate section for reference books. 2a. Existing as an independent entity. b. often Separate Having undergone schism or estrangement from a parent body: Separate churches. 3. Dissimilar from all others; distinct: "a policeman's way of being separate from you even when he was being nice" (John le Carré). 4. Not shared; individual: two people who held separate views on the issue. 5. Archaic Withdrawn from others; solitary.

NOUN: (spr-t, sprt) A garment, such as a skirt, jacket, or pair of slacks, that may be purchased separately and worn in various combinations with other garments.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English separaten, from Latin spartus, past participle of sparre : s-, apart; see s(w)e- in Appendix I + parre, to prepare; see per-1 in Appendix I.