【Strip】 , 【divest】 , 【denude】 , 【bare】 , 【dismantle】 can mean to deprive a person or thing of what clothes, furnishes, or invests him or it.
【Strip】 stresses a pulling or tearing off rather than a laying 【bare】 , though the latter implication is frequent; it often connotes more or less violent action or complete deprivation.
【Divest】 , in contrast to 【strip】 , does not suggest violence; it usually implies a taking away of what a person or thing has been clothed or equipped with especially as a sign of power, rank, influence, or prestige.
Therefore it often connotes an undoing or a dispossession or a degrading.
【Denude】 implies a stripping or divesting, but distinctively it implies a resulting bareness or nakedness.
【Bare】 , although it suggests a removal of what covers or clothes, seldom carries implications of violent or complete stripping; it is chiefly used in idiomatic phrases which imply more than the mere act; thus, to 【bare】 one's head is to take off one's hat usually as a sign of respect or reverence; to 【bare】 one's sword is to unsheathe it and to have it ready for action; to 【bare】 one's heart to another is to reveal feelings one has concealed; to 【bare】 the secrets of the grave is to disclose, often as a result of a discovery of documents, something which had been known only to persons now dead.
【Dismantle】 is used chiefly with reference to the act of stripping a house, a building, a ship, or a complex installation (as of machinery) of its entire equipment and furnishings.
