Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (intransitive) 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
  2. (transitive) 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 presentdegrows
present participledegrowing
pastdegrew
past participledegrown

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

  1. Degroots
  2. degroup
  3. degrouped
  4. degrouping
  5. degroups
  6. degrow
  7. degrowth
  8. degrowther
  9. degrowthers
  10. degrowths
  11. degs

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.

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