unloose
Americanverb (used with object)
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to loosen or relax (the grasp, hold, fingers, etc.).
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to let loose or set free; free from restraint.
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to undo or untie (a fastening, knot, etc.); unfasten.
verb
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to set free; release
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to loosen or relax (a hold, grip, etc)
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to unfasten or untie
Etymology
Origin of unloose
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:
I unloose the cow and leave her and her newborn to each other.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 22, 2018
And in a way this has stifled exactly the sort of catharsis the play is supposed to unloose.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 3, 2014
In the equivalent of flight attendants becoming pilots, caddies became players seven days a week, not merely on Monday mornings, when the clubs where they worked might unloose them onto largely vacant courses.
From New York Times ● Apr. 10, 2010
And perhaps, if the deep truth of that symbolism strikes home, he will doff his hat in salutation to a man the latchet of whose shoes he is unworthy to unloose.
From Time Magazine Archive
The continents strain to unloose themselves, to drift reckless and heavy in the seas.
From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García
The right to have the stays of gender unloosed, the right to breathe.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 8, 2018
As the story opens, the good people of Aldwinter are wondering whether an earthquake has unloosed their old monster from the estuary depths.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 5, 2017
We see her dark hair unloosed, a cascade of black.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 11, 2016
Try as the author might to feel affinity for the unloosed and the wandering, it doesn't always happen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2015
The economic, political, and social forces that unloosed themselves on the streets of Petrograd and launched the Russian Revolution were vastly more complex than Alexei’s hemophilia or Rasputin’s machinations.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
And, in the San Francisco Bay Area, burrowing rodents may be digging into entombed trash at a landfill-turned-park, unloosing explosive levels of methane.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2025
But, unfortunately, if the contagion spreads to all the elements of our planet, the consequences of unloosing such a cataclysm can only be viewed with apprehension.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2023
The effect has been an unloosing of hysteria upon the land.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 3, 2018
Our disruption of the natural world, “Spillover” declares, is largely to blame for unloosing terrible microbes.
From New York Times ● Oct. 2, 2012
After some little correspondence, the betrothal was drawn up in due form, and the young couple were bound to each other by legal ties which no court in the Empire would ever dream of unloosing.
From Chinese Folk-Lore Tales by Macgowan, J. (John)
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.
