Word.ws English Dictionary

defactor

defactor verb: to modify source code to remove design patterns and structure, for example to make it harder to reverse-engineer.

Verb

defactor (third-person singular simple present defactors, present participle defactoring, simple past and past participle defactored)

  1. (rare) To modify source code to remove design patterns and structure, for example to make it harder to reverse-engineer.
    • One of my favorite transformations is to use threads to confuse a hacker who is trying to steal code. […] Many of the transformations I've discussed go against the programmer's natural sense of what's good and right […] You also don't have to defactor (see the section "Removing Programming Idioms")...2012, Godfrey Nolan, Decompiling Android, page 137

Forms of defactor

third-person singular presentdefactors
present participledefactoring
past participledefactored
pastdefactored

Origin of defactor

de- + factor, modelled on earlier refactor.

Questions about defactor

What does defactor mean?
Defactor means to modify source code to remove design patterns and structure, for example to make it harder to reverse-engineer.
What part of speech is defactor?
Defactor is a verb.
What is the past tense of defactor?
The past tense of defactor is defactored.

Words near defactor in the dictionary

  1. defacing
  2. defacingly
  3. defacings
  4. defactinib
  5. defacto
  6. defactor
  7. defactored
  8. defactoring
  9. defactors
  10. defactos
  11. defactualization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defactor (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.

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