Definition of "disintegrating"

"By means of the purple disintegrating rays, the site to be used later for agricultural purposes is treated exactly as is the canal proper."

1916 November, Hugo Gernsback, “Baron Münchhausen's New Scientific Adventures”, in The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 539, column 2

The city did not evolve up from the ground, it descended from Heaven; the me's, the divine laws which constitute the program for civilization, were carried by Inanna from the seat of Enki at Eridu to her beloved Erech (Uruk); without these divine laws, no city can hold together, no wall can stand against the disintegrating wind of the desert.

1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 186