fall apart

verb

1. To disintegrate, to break into pieces.

   “My old briefcase is falling apart. I'll have to buy a new one.”

   “England's World Cup dreams fell apart under a French onslaught on a night when their shortcomings were brutally exposed at the quarter-final stage.”

2. To be emotionally in crisis.

   “As a result of being addicted to heroin, she was falling apart.”

   “At first I used to look at so many of us having fights or crying or staggering around messed up somehow and think, "God, are we fucked up!" but now what I think is that it was a safe place to fall apart in — one of the few. You didn't have to be politically correct or well-behaved; you could be wild or angry or miserable.”

3. To separate.

   “And when my care was moſt, by Gods pꝛouidence onely, by the burning aſunder of our ſpꝛitſaile-yard with ropes and ſaile, and the ropes about the ſpꝛitſaile-yard of the Carack, whereby we were faſt intangled, we fell apart, with burning of ſome of our ſailes which we had then on booꝛd.”

   “Again the mountains fall apart, and in a wide basin of corn-land and pasture lies the bourgade of La Thuile.”