degrow
degrow verb: to become smaller; to shrink.
Verb
degrow (third-person singular simple present degrows, present participle degrowing, simple past degrew, past participle degrown)
- To become smaller; to shrink.
- They can eat vast amounts when times are good, and can even ‘degrow’ when food is scarce, consuming their own body mass very slowly, with no ill-effects.2014, Theo Tait, ‘Water-Borne Zombies’, London Review of Books, volume 36, number 5
- Essentially, this meant that the markets were expecting the company to degrow and its economic performance to deteriorate.2015, Sanjay Kulkarni, The Value Elephant
- To make (something) smaller, to reduce.
- It seems likely that wealthy countries in Western Europe and North America need to degrow their economies before establishing a steady state.2013, Rob Dietz, Dan O'Neill, Enough is Enough, page 184
Forms of degrow
| third-person singular present | degrows |
|---|---|
| present participle | degrowing |
| past | degrew |
| past participle | degrown |
Origin of degrow
From de- + grow.
Questions about degrow
- What does degrow mean?
- Degrow means to become smaller; to shrink.
- What part of speech is degrow?
- Degrow is a verb.
- What is the past tense of degrow?
- The past tense of degrow is degrew.
Words near degrow in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: degrow (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:
Cite this entry: “degrow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/degrow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
