depave
depave verb: to undo the act of paving; to remove pavement (especially if it is in the form of asphalt, concrete or the like) so as to restore the land to a more natural state.
Verb
depave (third-person singular simple present depaves, present participle depaving, simple past and past participle depaved)
- To undo the act of paving; to remove pavement (especially if it is in the form of asphalt, concrete or the like) so as to restore the land to a more natural state.
- Environmental programs: Depaving; auto free city centers; closure of roads...1995 September, Susan Cohn, Green at Work, Island Press, page 223
- Hand out a bonus for building on wasted brownfields and depaving asphalt ones; penalize building on greenfields.1998 October, Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, University of California Press, page 356
- Synonyms:
- unpave
Examples of depave in a sentence
- Then the town depaved part of a city street and closed another to cars.2000 March–April, Laird Harrison, "Depaving Paradise", Audubon Magazine https://web.archive.org/web/20060815221845/http://magazine.audubon.o...
- They depaved their driveway to grow food, and they are proud to own no car, TV or refrigerator2002, Jan Lundberg, "Gasoline Prices and Food: in Context", Culture Change, at www.culturechange.org...
- UA Homes had real difficulty persuading City Hall to allow us to depave about six places for a garden.2003, Richard Register, "Depaving the World", Culture Change, at www.culturechange.org http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/rregister.html
Synonyms of depave
Forms of depave
| third-person singular present | depaves |
|---|---|
| present participle | depaving |
| past participle | depaved |
| past | depaved |
Origin of depave
From de- + pave.
Questions about depave
- What does depave mean?
- Depave means to undo the act of paving; to remove pavement (especially if it is in the form of asphalt, concrete or the like) so as to restore the land to a more natural state.
- How do you use depave in a sentence?
- Then the town depaved part of a city street and closed another to cars.
- What part of speech is depave?
- Depave is a verb.
- What is the past tense of depave?
- The past tense of depave is depaved.
Words near depave in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: depave (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: “depave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/depave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.