unstring
Americanverb
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to remove the strings of
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(of beads, pearls, etc) to remove or take from a string
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to weaken or enfeeble emotionally (a person or his nerves)
Etymology
Origin of unstring
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That alone would’ve been enough for me to unstring my racquets and call it a career.
From Newsweek ● Jun. 21, 2011
Meantime, as if fearful that the continuance of the scene might too much unstring his master, the servant seemed anxious to terminate it.
From The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
If I had, I might ha' whistled for another, for my father wasn't quite so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know of.
From Silas Marner by George Eliot
But the constant mental fever under which he laboured was beginning to undermine a naturally-robust constitution, and to unstring the nerves of a well-made, powerful frame.
From The Golden Dream Adventures in the Far West by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
My nerves unstring, my friend; my flesh grows weak: "The good that I do I leave undone, The evil which I would not, that I do!"
From The Dynasts by Thomas Hardy
The remembered fact brought with it a degradation of mind and body—a complete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revenge seem an impossible output of energy.
From The History of David Grieve by Mrs. Humphry Ward
Did he—as when, hunting in the forest of Rouen, he got the news of Harold's coronation—play with his bow, stringing and unstringing it nervously, till he had made up his mighty mind?
From Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley
"Maybe it's too early yet for the unstringing to begin!"
From The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister
His liveliest sallies, his bitterest jests, were all reserved for these occasions, so that mirth or anger was forever unstringing the nerves of his competitors, and diminishing their chance of gain.
From Bred in the Bone by James Payn
Tim Reardon, unstringing two of the pickerel from the rope, transferred them to a twig of alder that he cut from a near by bush, and handed them to her.
From The Rival Campers Ashore The Mystery of the Mill by Ruel Perley Smith
By the time Gilgamesh sets out in search of immortality, he is already unstrung.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
He also wore a fur pelt around his neck and carried an unstrung wooden archery bow.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 13, 2023
That is not to say it’s historically unstrung along the lines of “The Great” or “Bridgerton” or Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”; generally speaking, it stays put within its period.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2021
We’ll leave our gloves, with their humble histories, just as they are, somewhat unstrung by time and use, like us.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 30, 2021
A whole row of unstrung bows in varying stages of repair or build rested on a worktable, and hundreds of bushels of arrows were stacked into pyramids on the floor beside them.
From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
