deaccession
UK/ˌdiːækˈsɛʃən/
deaccession verb: to officially remove an object from a ledger of a museum, art gallery or library so that it may be sold or disposed.
Verb
deaccession (third-person singular simple present deaccessions, present participle deaccessioning, simple past and past participle deaccessioned)
- To officially remove an object from a ledger of a museum, art gallery or library so that it may be sold or disposed.
- Perhaps he forgets that museums, too, have basements full of stored art, and not every piece is equally adored. The temptation must be great to “deaccession” some of it, and museums often do succumb.2000 December, Jeanne Schinto, “Obscure Objects of Lapsed Desire”, in The Atlantic
- Over the past few years, the museum has quietly begun deaccessioning—the genteel art-world euphemism for “getting rid of”—large numbers of its city artifacts.2010 June, John Freeman Gill, “Ghosts of New York”, in The Atlantic
- Synonyms:
- deacquisition
Noun
deaccession (countable and uncountable, plural deaccessions)
- The disposal of objects in this way, or the disposed object itself.
- At the last board meeting, trustee Edmund Carpenter moved to clamp down on private trades. All deaccessions, he proposed, should go to other museums, or failing that, to public sale with full disclosure of records and documentation. The motion failed to get a second and there the matter died.1974 March 31, Leah Gordon, “Trading a Museum's Treasure—a Very Hazardous Business”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- Antonyms:
- accession
Synonyms of deaccession
Antonyms
Forms of deaccession
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | deaccessions |
| present participle | deaccessioning |
| past participle | deaccessioned |
| past | deaccessioned |
| Noun | |
| plural | deaccessions |
Origin of deaccession
From de- + accession.
Questions about deaccession
- What does deaccession mean?
- Deaccession means to officially remove an object from a ledger of a museum, art gallery or library so that it may be sold or disposed.
- What part of speech is deaccession?
- Deaccession can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce deaccession?
- Deaccession is pronounced /ˌdiːækˈsɛʃən/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of deaccession?
- The past tense of deaccession is deaccessioned.
Words near deaccession in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deaccession (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “deaccession.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deaccession. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.