disrobe
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
-
to remove the clothing of (a person) or (of a person) to undress
-
(tr) to divest of authority, etc
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of disrobe
Explanation
When you disrobe, you take your clothes off. Before you go swimming, you should probably disrobe and put on a bathing suit. Everyone disrobes, before we take a shower, change our clothes, or go skinny dipping. To disrobe is simply to get undressed. You might disrobe in a dressing room to try on a tuxedo or disrobe before your karate class so you can put on your white karate gi. The word uses the prefix dis-, "do the opposite of," before robe, with its old fashioned verb sense of "clothe."
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:
“The fact that I have to prove I don’t have tattoos on my upper body, disrobe, quite frankly is a little humiliating,” Rhambo told The Times on Thursday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2021
If you find the skins difficult to remove, drop the fruit in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, plunge in an ice bath and then they should be more easy to disrobe.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2021
Monsignor Charles Portelli, who was the cathedral's master of ceremonies in the 1990s, testified that he was always with Pell after Mass to help him disrobe in the sacristy.
From Fox News ● Feb. 26, 2019
Later, a curt attendee comes to lead her down a drab, darkened hall, ushers her into a room, locks the door, and asks Sawyer to empty her bag, hand over her phone and disrobe.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 21, 2018
Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling A snow-dust everywhere.
From In The Yule-Log Glow, Book IV by Morris, Harrison S. (Harrison Smith)
Sue Tilley was 35 years old and working in a London employment office when she disrobed and let British artist Lucian Freud paint her in the nude.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026
Chief Justice Varale also invoked Draupadi from the epic Mahabharat, who's saved by Hindu god Krishna when she's being disrobed, to advise women "to pick up arms as no god will come to protect you".
From BBC ● Dec. 26, 2023
As his teammates around him disrobed and walked to the showers, Herbert sat in front of his locker and stared at the ground.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2023
He headed western U.S. congregations but was disrobed in a church trial last year after officials concluded he had mishandled funds.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 25, 2022
But the ceremony did not end here, for the poor babes were taken to a font, and in the midst of long Coptic prayers they were disrobed and immersed three times.
From Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various
But the disrobing has other benefits: A thick, sour miasma of pig excrement engulfs me as I make my way inside, and I’m glad I’ve left my clothes behind.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 7, 2023
She delivered again, face stripped of makeup and disrobing from her couture to wear a simple black t-shirt and ripped jeans to perform "Hold My Hand" from "Top Gun."
From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2023
Later that day, the fresh tape on her temples would unstick in time for the scrubbing, disrobing, and de-wigging that must take place before Sarah can go home to her wife.
From Slate ● Mar. 29, 2019
Although those encounters are described with raw detail, the narrator’s deliberate disrobing of his own psyche feels even more intimate.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 14, 2016
In the latter state, he seemed a flimsy dingy-blond youth of medium height, fleshless and perhaps sunken-chested; disrobing revealed that he was nothing of the sort, but, rather, an athlete constructed on a welterweight scale.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
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.
