unloose

American  

[uhn-loos] / ʌnˈlus /

verb (used with object)

unloosed, unloosing

1. to loosen or relax (the grasp, hold, fingers, etc.).

2. to let loose or set free; free from restraint.

3. to undo or untie (a fastening, knot, etc.); unfasten.

---

unloose British  

/ ʌnˈluːs /

verb

1. to set free; release

2. to loosen or relax (a hold, grip, etc)

3. to unfasten or untie

---

Etymology

Origin of unloose

1325–75; Middle English unloosen; see un- ², loose

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

unloose unloosed unloosing

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

There was little doubt that the Red Army was ready to unloose the flood all along the Stettin-Dresden front.

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

Only once is the anger unloosed, in the opening credits, when Amen’s “Coma America” is played at such a volume that it sounds like a scream.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 22, 2019

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

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

Worn out by all that talking, by all that remembering, by the story I’d kept inside me all these decades, unloosed by this boy who so needed to hear it.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman

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

Now he found that he could not remember the first phrases without unloosing and looking at a small roll of paper which he held furtively in his hand.

From Phineas Finn The Irish Member by Trollope, Anthony