unsee

American  

[uhn-see] / ˌʌnˈsi /

verb (used with object)

unsaw, unseen, unseeing

1. to remove (something seen) from one's memory or conscious awareness; to forget or ignore images or the like.

   It's a good tutorial for anyone who's ever published something and then found a mistake they can't unsee in it.

   He really wished he could unsee the violent images he had accidentally glimpsed.

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Etymology

Origin of unsee

First recorded in 1350–1400

Example Sentences

“No!” he said, putting his hands in front of his eyes, trying to unsee Toby, trying to erase what he’d done—oh, how he wished he could—but there was no erasing it, no undoing it, no time machine to let him travel back and stop himself.

From Literature

“The main event is this: the world is building optionality away from U.S. policy and platform dependence. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it — because it’s showing up in procurement decisions, supply chains, defense budgets, and capital flows,” Tuttle says.

From MarketWatch

But the largest error that lies in the hope that people will eventually come around to feeling compassion for the suffering of the “other”—the refugee and the migrant and the trans kid and the woman with an ectopic pregnancy—is that it ignores that we are being trained every day in the opposite direction: We are being conditioned to unsee even those people for whom we felt some kinship a mere eight years ago.

From Slate

It’s sort of like there’s an image that you can’t unsee.

From Los Angeles Times

Now that we’ve unearthed these lines, we can’t unsee them.

From Slate

Related Words

• dismiss from mind
• forget