unbuild
Americanverb (used with object)
Etymology
Origin of unbuild
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:
If you dally as the clock approaches 2 p.m. on Sunday, you will see that Jerson Osorio’s team can unbuild a city as fast as they can build one.
From Slate ● Dec. 22, 2024
Over the next several weeks, her relatives unbuild Ypi’s entire sense of reality: Her country was a prison, her education was indoctrination, the old versions of freedom and democracy were lies.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2022
And though stigmergy might explain how termites build, it does not readily explain why they so often unbuild, dismantling and modifying their work as they go.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
There is something striking about hearing Deulofeu talking about the future and stability, although the risk when you build a talented team is that others come and unbuild it.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 16, 2015
"Build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances, to gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
From St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 No 1, Nov 1877 by Dodge, Mary Mapes
And that would mean unbuilding the Great Wall.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 20, 2022
Indeed, the termite mound is not so much a building as a body, a self-regulating organic process that continuously reacts to its changing environment, building and unbuilding itself.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
And the dreams that have gotten away have tended to be unfulfilled exercises in unbuilding and regreening.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 7, 2018
To minimize the potential for contamination, workers have had to reverse engineer HA-23S, essentially unbuilding it from the inside using the glove ports.
From BusinessWeek ● Aug. 1, 2013
Our most piercing insight yields no deeper conception of life than that of perpetual building and unbuilding; and during what we call our rest, it is often most active in executing its inscrutable will.
From The Mettle of the Pasture by Allen, James Lane
In 2025, London had 281,000 unbuilt homes—houses that were conditionally accepted but never built, often because the developer decided the conditions were too arduous.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
The proposed moratorium would not have stopped the giant World Logistics Center, which was approved by the City Council in 2015 and remains largely unbuilt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 5, 2026
Four of these centres are up and running, one has been further committed to by Scottish ministers but the remaining five remain unbuilt and have racked up £34m in costs so far.
From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2025
Hobbs added that there are 80,000 unbuilt homes that will be able to move forward because they already have assured water supply certificates within the Phoenix Active Management Area, a designation used for regulating groundwater.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 1, 2023
The hour is black, my road unbuilt; My beggar's song I cannot sing; yet, thou knowest, For thy love I long!
From Sandhya Songs of Twilight by Mukerji, Dhan Gopal
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.
