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.
-
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)
-
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
For seven humid, wakeful nights, the crash of thunder and flash of lightning had kept the cariocas awake, and the superstitious among them wondered if the gods of darkness had decided to unloose their wrath.
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
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
Out it pours: the song unloosed by her maddened craving for Fielder—by no means the first wastrel, in history, for whose sake a thing of beauty has been wrought.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 1, 2015
This soon became clear when a platoon of otters on the ramparts unloosed a rattling fusillade of heavy pebbles.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
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
We see him on one occasion appearing in Rome itself, to announce to pope and emperor the unloosing of the divine wrath.-
From Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Houghton, Louise Seymour
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.
