Word.ws English Dictionary

defamiliarise

defamiliarise is the alternative spelling of defamiliarize.

Meaning of defamiliarize

Verb

defamiliarize (third-person singular simple present defamiliarizes, present participle defamiliarizing, simple past and past participle defamiliarized)

  1. (transitive) To make unfamiliar; to divest of familiarity.
    • From its speculated future position, the film [Carnage] thus defamiliarizes and invites us to recognize the absurdities of meat and dairy consumption.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 227

Forms of defamiliarise

third-person singular presentdefamiliarises
present participledefamiliarising
past participledefamiliarised
pastdefamiliarised

Origin of defamiliarise

From de- + familiarise.

Questions about defamiliarise

What is defamiliarise the alternative spelling of?
Defamiliarise is the alternative spelling of defamiliarize.

Words near defamiliarise in the dictionary

  1. defamilialized
  2. defamilializes
  3. defamilializing
  4. defamiliarisation
  5. defamiliarisations
  6. defamiliarise
  7. defamiliarised
  8. defamiliarises
  9. defamiliarising
  10. defamiliarization
  11. defamiliarizations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defamiliarise (page history and authors); defamiliarize (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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Cite this entry: “defamiliarise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/defamiliarise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.