unteach

American  

[uhn-teech] / ʌnˈtitʃ /

verb (used with object)

untaught, unteaching

1. to cause to be forgotten or disbelieved, as by contrary teaching.

2. to cause to forget or disbelieve something previously taught.

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unteach British  

/ ʌnˈtiːtʃ /

verb

1. to cause to disbelieve (teaching)

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Etymology

Origin of unteach

First recorded in 1525–35; un- ² + teach

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

unteach untaught unteaching

As a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania, she’ll be on the front line of academics condemned to unteach Nolan’s heavily altered screenplay to students who will arrive quoting it chapter and verse.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026

“It’s exactly what I try to unteach physicians,” she said.

From New York Times ● Apr. 14, 2021

"You are not born a racist, it's taught by your parents, your environment, school. We want to unteach it, to use the same institutions reproducing stereotypes to turn them around."

From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2020

Whatever he learned in law school, no one could unteach him, whether he practiced or not.

From Seattle Times ● May 14, 2017

I pitied their woes and brought them solace: I taught them to forget—and in the forgetting maybe they have learned much that thou wilt have to unteach.

From The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

In previous strikes, a "no-detriment" policy was applied to prevent students being penalised and removing untaught topics from assessments.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

Nor was he as untaught as he claimed; he took classes and learned a great deal from his painter friends.

From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2021

The very thing that this museum is about — the contributions of black people to U.S. society — has been untaught for so long that the truth remains elusive.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 22, 2016

Weight machines, by design, entirely remove skill from the equation: They are intended to offer the untaught user a way to lift.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2016

She didn’t tell him how others seemed simply to come to her untaught.

From "Gathering Blue" by Lois Lowry

After that Shorty returned to the bunk house, and the Virginian knew that the boy had learned his lesson of discontent from Trampas with a thoroughness past all unteaching.

From The Virginian, a Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister

Early impressions are the most lasting, and the hardest part of school work for the teacher is the unteaching of false ideas, and the correcting of imperfectly formed and partially understood ideas.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 286, June 25, 1881 by Various

He says, "The conscientious study would be useful to humanity by teaching the use and unteaching the abuse of the Malthusian system, 536 whereby the family is duly limited to the necessities of society."

From The Life of Sir Richard Burton by Thomas Wright

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