Word.ws English Dictionary

deskilled

deskilled is the simple past and past participle of deskill.

Meaning of deskill

Verb

deskill (third-person singular simple present deskills, present participle deskilling, simple past and past participle deskilled)

  1. (transitive) To redesign (a job) so that less skill is required to carry it out, for example through the introduction of new technology.
    • The impact on workers is fairly obvious but I believe that managerial jobs have also been deskilled by the adoption of controlling systems and procedures.
  2. (transitive) To change the role of (workers) so that they are no longer required or able to use the skills that they have acquired.
    • Tragic, too, is the gradual deskilling of teachers, loss of excitement about the profession, and loss of gifted teachers to other pursuits.

Questions about deskilled

What is deskilled the simple past and past participle of?
Deskilled is the simple past and past participle of deskill.

Words near deskilled in the dictionary

  1. deskful
  2. deskfuls
  3. deskie
  4. deskies
  5. deskill
  6. deskilled
  7. deskiller
  8. deskillers
  9. deskilling
  10. deskills
  11. deskin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deskilled (page history and authors); deskill (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: “deskilled.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deskilled. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.