debar
Americanverb (used with object)
-
debars,
present (3rd person singular)
-
debarred,
past participle, past
-
debarring
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
debarsimple
-
debarssimple
-
have debarredperfect
-
has debarredperfect
-
am debarringprogressive
-
are debarringprogressive
-
is debarringprogressive
-
have been debarringperfect progressive
-
has been debarringperfect progressive
Past
-
debarredsimple
-
had debarredperfect
-
was debarringprogressive
-
were debarringprogressive
-
had been debarringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of debar
1400–50; late Middle English < Middle French, Old French desbarrer to lock out, bar. See de-, bar 1
Explanation
To debar is to officially bar, ban, or exclude someone from doing something. Debar can also mean to prevent something from happening. If you have a hat club, you can debar anyone who’s not wearing one. If someone is barred from entering, they are prevented from entering. Oddly enough, to debar them means the same thing. If you're debarred from a school, you can no longer attend. If a politician is debarred from office, they've been thrown out. You can also debar events. Eating well and exercising can debar many health problems. This kind of debarring means the same as averting. People try to debar negative things from happening.
Vocabulary lists containing debar
Paradise Lost
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Emily of New Moon
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A Room of One's Own
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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:
It is relatively rare for HHS to debar an NIH grantee.
From Science Magazine ● May 15, 2024
On Dec. 30, Labor announced a move to debar or prohibit any new federal contracts with Restaurant Associates.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 4, 2017
You would think that views like that might just debar you from holding that office, but no.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2015
The company said Thursday that it had “not been advised of the intention of any federal agency to suspend or debar the company in connection with the plea agreement.”
From New York Times ● Nov. 16, 2012
Always cheerful and fond of company, I would never debar the soldier from enjoyment, either in or out of barracks.
From The Young Dragoon Every Day Life of a Soldier by A.W. Drayson
The temptation to do this presses heavily on those whose occupations end with daylight and on those multitudes of elderly folk whose chief sorrow now is that age debars them from public service.
From Time Magazine Archive
By choosing to write such a story, or by choosing to write any definite story, a writer debars himself from creating any atmosphere not involved in the story selected for writing.
From The Technique of Fiction Writing by Robert Saunders Dowst
But the medical profession has its well known code of ethics which debars its members from "pushing their business," and has, in certain places and times at least, prescribed a minimum tariff of fees.
From Monopolies and the People by Charles Whiting Baker
This constant change of employment debars me from literary and theological improvement, and leaves me less qualified to expound Scripture to refined assemblies.
From The Story of My Life Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada by J. George (John George) Hodgins
Yet, alas! one trifling deficiency ruins his prospects; he has an impediment in his speech, which debars him from the use of the W’s.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, December 18, 1841 by Various
Horowitz criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 11, 2023
The divorced, disgraced, and debarred physician was ready to come out of the shadows: He was an illegal abortionist and had been for more than 35 years and 25,000 procedures.
From Slate ● Jun. 15, 2022
Career employees, meanwhile, have faced warning letters, reprimands, suspensions without pay and, in extreme cases, been fired and debarred from returning to government.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 28, 2020
The order stipulates that officials who violate the pledge can be debarred from their post and future lobbying, and possibly sued in civil court.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 28, 2017
For this doctrine, as may be presumed, he was debarred from all preaching.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
At the opening of the nineteenth century England still kept on the statute book the laws debarring Roman Catholics and dissenters from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office.
From An Introduction to the History of Western Europe by James Harvey Robinson
If you abide by it, you deny the Absolute and Infinite in the very act of affirming it, for, in debarring the First Cause from self-revelation, you impose a limit on its nature.
From On the Genesis of Species by St. George Mivart
But now, how immeasurably worse than poverty was his condition!—disgrace, dishonour,—irrevocable, perhaps inexpiable,—possibly debarring him from ever claiming his rights!
From Nevermore by Rolf Bolderwood
By much musing on this matter, I have convinced myself that man is not capable of debarring himself utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy for many evils that nothing else would cure.
From Septimius Felton, or, the Elixir of Life by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Albeit a judicial trial or censure be indeed necessary, for inflicting punishment or censure upon men, yet it is not necessary for avoiding association with them, or debarring them from trust.
From The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning by Hugh Binning
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.
