unbuild

[ uhn-bild ]

verb (used with object)

, un·built, un·build·ing.

1. to demolish (something built); raze.

Word History and Origins

Origin of unbuild¹

First recorded in 1600–10; un- ² + build

Example Sentences

If infrastructure was going to fail Black people, art could imagine ways to “unbuild” things.

From New York Times

Over the next several weeks, her relatives unbuild Ypi’s entire sense of reality: Her country was a prison, her education was indoctrination, the old versions of freedom and democracy were lies.

From Washington Post

If you’re going to introduce a dragon in Act 1, it had better go off in Act 3 — and A Lot Has Been Made of the fact that dragon fire built the throne, ergo, dragon fire should unbuild it.

From Los Angeles Times

They decline Richard’s request to read Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Cloud” at the funeral, too prosaic to grasp the power of a poem that ends with a classic Smithian paradox: “And out of the caverns of rain / Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb / I arise and unbuild it again.”

From The Guardian

Unbuild elaborate creations piece by piece, or smash them to smithereens all at once!

From The Guardian

Related Words

• abolish
• annul
• destroy
• mar
• negate
• offset
• overturn
• quash
• reverse
• ruin
• shatter
• spoil
• subvert
• undermine
• wipe out
• wreck