Word.ws English Dictionary

debrief

UK/diːˈbɹiːf//diˈbɹif/

debrief verb: to question someone after a military mission in order to obtain information (especially intelligence).

Verb

debrief (third-person singular simple present debriefs, present participle debriefing, simple past and past participle debriefed)

  1. (transitive) To question someone after a military mission in order to obtain information (especially intelligence).
    • But, for whatever combination of reasons - and, to be fair, he'd been blasted in the face by shrapnel, was probably badly concussed, and, indeed, would actually remember nothing from the battle after he'd been hit when he was later debriefed - aside from two destroyers left behind to help Hiei, the...2021 March 10, Drachinifel, 24:41 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN), archived from the original on 07 Nov 2022
  2. (transitive) To question someone, or a group of people, after the implementation of a project, in order to learn from mistakes, etc.
  3. (transitive) To inform subjects of an experiment about what has happened in a complete and accurate manner.

Noun

debrief (plural debriefs)

  1. Synonym of debriefing
    • We had a debrief yesterday.
    • Family psychologist Susan Gamache said a family debrief of the holidays, once the dust has settled in January, will help make Christmas more manageable next time.2018 January 2, Clare Hennig, “Holiday debrief: Now's the time for a family review of Christmas”, in CBC.ca, archived from the original on 05 Apr 2026
    Synonyms:
    debriefing

debrief meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

debrief in Tamil

சுருக்க விளக்கம்

debrief in Malayalam

quiz, question, examine
വിവരം ശേഖരിക്കുക, ചോദ്യംചെയ്ക, ആരായുക, ചുഴിഞ്ഞുചോദിക്കുക, കർശനമായി ചോദ്യം ചെയ്യുക, വിവരം തേടുക

Examples of debrief in a sentence

  • We lied our way through the debriefing.
  • The room into which Lieutenant Said led Cora was obviously the debriefing room of a lab complex.
  • Online coaches or interplayer chat could help debrief and clarify the situations in the game.

All 10 example sentences with debrief

Synonyms of debrief

Forms of debrief

Verb
third-person singular presentdebriefs
present participledebriefing
past participledebriefed
pastdebriefed
Noun
pluraldebriefs

Past tense of debrief: debriefed

Origin of debrief

From de- + brief.

Words formed from debrief

Words that rhyme with debrief

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about debrief

What does debrief mean?
Debrief means to question someone after a military mission in order to obtain information (especially intelligence).
What is debrief in Tamil?
Debrief in Tamil is சுருக்க விளக்கம். See Debrief meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is debrief?
Debrief can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce debrief?
Debrief is pronounced /diːˈbɹiːf/ (UK).
What is the past tense of debrief?
The past tense of debrief is debriefed.

Words near debrief in the dictionary

  1. debrider
  2. debriders
  3. debrides
  4. debriding
  5. debridings
  6. debrief
  7. debriefed
  8. debriefee
  9. debriefees
  10. debriefer
  11. debriefers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: debrief (page history and authors); debrief (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); debrief (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Qwertygiy-debrief.wav.

Cite this entry: “debrief.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/debrief. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.