Word.ws English Dictionary

decouple

[diːˈkʌpəɫ]

decouple verb: to unlink; to take apart or come apart.

Verb

decouple (third-person singular simple present decouples, present participle decoupling, simple past and past participle decoupled)

  1. (ambitransitive) To unlink; to take apart or come apart.
    • radiation decoupled from matter
    • to decouple a spent rocket stage
    Synonyms:
    uncouple, unpair, dispair
  2. (transitive) To muffle the seismic waves of (a nuclear explosion) by performing it underground.
    • Smaller explosions and decoupled tests would be permitted. Further, the United States proposed that the three powers should start intensive research on the improvement of methods for detection and identification of underground explosions […]1961, Hans Albrecht Bethe, Edward Teller, The Future of Nuclear Tests, page 18
    • Decoupled tests would be nuclear explosions set off in massive underground caverns, a site that would greatly reduce the seismic waves caused by the explosion.1993, Sam Marullo, Ending the Cold War at Home, page 55

Examples of decouple in a sentence

  • Pence went on to say that America did not seek a technological decoupling from China.
  • This mechanism provides latency hiding by decoupling the micro-threaded processor from the token circulation time.
  • As the trade war stabilizes, the capital war begins, with nations decoupling their banking systems and investment portfolios.

All 11 example sentences with decouple

Synonyms of decouple

Forms of decouple

third-person singular presentdecouples
present participledecoupling
past participledecoupled
pastdecoupled

Past tense of decouple: decoupled

Origin of decouple

From Middle French découpler. By surface analysis, de- + couple.

Words formed from decouple

Questions about decouple

What does decouple mean?
Decouple means to unlink; to take apart or come apart.
What part of speech is decouple?
Decouple is a verb.
How do you pronounce decouple?
Decouple is pronounced [diːˈkʌpəɫ] (UK).
What is the past tense of decouple?
The past tense of decouple is decoupled.

Words near decouple in the dictionary

  1. decoupage
  2. decoupaged
  3. decoupages
  4. decoupaging
  5. decouplable
  6. decouple
  7. decoupled
  8. decouplement
  9. decouplements
  10. decoupler
  11. decouplers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: decouple (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:

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

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