Word.ws English Dictionary

debunk

UK/diːˈbʌŋk/US/dɪˈbʌŋk/

debunk verb: to discredit, or expose to ridicule the falsehood or the exaggerated claims of something; to refute.

Verb

debunk (third-person singular simple present debunks, present participle debunking, simple past and past participle debunked)

  1. (transitive) To discredit, or expose to ridicule the falsehood or the exaggerated claims of something; to refute.
    • The explosion story was thoroughly debunked on National Public Radio in November 1999.
    • debunk a theory

Noun

debunk (plural debunks)

  1. (informal) A debunking; the act by which something is debunked.

debunk meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Arabic

debunk in Urdu

بےنقاب کرنا, جھٹلانا, پول کھولنا, قلعی کھولنا

debunk in Malayalam

deflate, explode, quash
കാപട്യത്തിന്റെ മറ നീക്കുക, കള്ളി വെളിച്ചത്താക്കുക, കൃത്രിമപ്രശസ്തി പൊളിക്കുക, വാദം പൊളിക്കുക, അടിസ്ഥാനമില്ലാത്തതെന്നു തെളിയിക്കുക, അബദ്ധമാണെന്നുവരുത്തുക

debunk in Arabic

to discredit or expose the falsehood of something
فَنَّدَ fannada

Examples of debunk in a sentence

  • It debunks the primacy of word over image in Western culture and suggests that the two are equal partners in meaning-making.2016 December 25, Amruta Patil, “The book in my hand”, in The Hindu:
  • Another of my favourite themes has been debunking promises of new technology.2024 January 10, Christian Wolmar, “A time for change? ... just as it was back in issue 262”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 61:

All 22 example sentences with debunk

Forms of debunk

Verb
third-person singular presentdebunks
present participledebunking
past participledebunked
pastdebunked
Noun
pluraldebunks

Past tense of debunk: debunked

Origin of debunk

From de- (“away”) + bunk (“nonsense”) (from bunkum, from Buncombe County) 1923.

Words formed from debunk

Words that rhyme with debunk

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about debunk

What does debunk mean?
Debunk means to discredit, or expose to ridicule the falsehood or the exaggerated claims of something; to refute.
What is debunk in Urdu?
Debunk in Urdu is بےنقاب کرنا, جھٹلانا, پول کھولنا. See Debunk meaning in Urdu.
How do you use debunk in a sentence?
It debunks the primacy of word over image in Western culture and suggests that the two are equal partners in meaning-making.
What part of speech is debunk?
Debunk can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce debunk?
Debunk is pronounced /diːˈbʌŋk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of debunk?
The past tense of debunk is debunked.

Words near debunk in the dictionary

  1. debunching
  2. debundle
  3. debundled
  4. debundles
  5. debundling
  6. debunk
  7. debunkable
  8. debunked
  9. debunker
  10. debunkers
  11. debunking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: debunk (page history and authors); debunk (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); debunk (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: en-au-debunk.ogg.

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