disown
Americanverb (used with object)
-
disowns,
present (3rd person singular)
-
disowned,
past participle, past
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disowning
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
disownsimple
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disownssimple
-
have disownedperfect
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has disownedperfect
-
am disowningprogressive
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are disowningprogressive
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is disowningprogressive
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have been disowningperfect progressive
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has been disowningperfect progressive
Past
-
disownedsimple
-
had disownedperfect
-
was disowningprogressive
-
were disowningprogressive
-
had been disowningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of disown
Explanation
To disown someone is to reject them. If you disown your brother, you refuse to have anything to do with him: not only do you not speak or have contact, but it's as if he's no longer related to you. When one person disowns another, it's because of some terrible argument or deep-rooted conflict. Although it's uncommon to disown another person, when it happens it's usually a family member who's cast off. Your mom might threaten to disown you after you drive her car into the mailbox, but she's probably not serious. Disown takes the root word own, meaning "to have or to hold," and adds the Latin prefix dis, "not" or "do the opposite of."
Vocabulary lists containing disown
The Prince and the Dressmaker
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Ship Breaker
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So Far from the Bamboo Grove
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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:
Just disown it and make a spectacle of disowning it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
“You don’t know me, fool / You disown me, cool,” Ice-T snarls in the 1988 hip-hop gang treatise “Colors.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 22, 2024
“My family would disown me,” he told the network in an email.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 29, 2023
“His view is if it’s good for him at that moment, he’ll do it, and then if something bad happens, he’ll disown any responsibility for it,” the former governor said.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 16, 2023
We can navigate the flock freely, with the ability to protect or disown as we see fit.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
If the ships are falsely flagged or flagged to a country that disowns them, the tankers can be subject to U.S. jurisdiction while in international waters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026
When Guida comes home alone, without her sailor but great with child, she is greeted with fury by her father, who disowns her, while her mother cowers in the background.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 13, 2019
Nanjiani’s acceptance into his girlfriend’s family is equally fraught, even if no one disowns anyone.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 21, 2017
The new perpetual secretary of the Academie disowns the Druon changes.
From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2016
In a national and moral sense he uses the term with approbation, but when in a theological sense he disowns it.
From Junius Unmasked or, Thomas Paine the author of the Letters of Junius and the Declaration of Independence by Joel Moody
About 10 years ago, when he first wanted to go public with the truth, his mother disowned him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has effectively been fired out of a cannon — disowned by the Royal Family and the political classes, and stripped of his titles.
From BBC ● Feb. 24, 2026
In her memoir, Erivo writes at length about her estrangement from her father, who disowned her when she was 16 after an argument in a London train station.
From Salon ● Nov. 18, 2025
But uncertainty surrounds the royal succession, with no public announcement of an heir to the current king -- among his seven children, four have been officially disowned.
From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2025
In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families.
From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author
He was born in Los Angeles to a white American mother and a Japanese father, the latter effectively disowning him while he was still in the womb.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026
The families of both Abu Shabab and Al-Astal issued statements disowning them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2025
The Jewish Community of Guatemala has issued a statement disowning the sect, describing it as foreign to its own organisation.
From BBC ● Dec. 23, 2024
The trend is so pronounced that some Chinese activists have taken to making preemptive “if I lose my freedom” videos, disowning any future “confessions” they might be forced to make.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 22, 2021
I heard women reveal to men that the children they’d raised were not theirs and elderly parents inform grown sons and daughters that they were disowning them.
From "Krik? Krak!" by Edwidge Danticat
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.
