Word.ws English Dictionary

disembellish

disembellish verb: to deprive of embellishment; to undecorate.

Verb

disembellish (third-person singular simple present disembellishes, present participle disembellishing, simple past and past participle disembellished)

  1. (transitive) To deprive of embellishment; to undecorate.
    • [G]ive it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.1831, Thomas Carlyle, “Pure Reason”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, 1st book, page 47

Forms of disembellish

third-person singular presentdisembellishes
present participledisembellishing
past participledisembellished
pastdisembellished

Origin of disembellish

From dis- + embellish: compare French désembellir.

Questions about disembellish

What does disembellish mean?
Disembellish means to deprive of embellishment; to undecorate.
What part of speech is disembellish?
Disembellish is a verb.
What is the past tense of disembellish?
The past tense of disembellish is disembellished.

Words near disembellish in the dictionary

  1. disembarrassments
  2. disembed
  3. disembedded
  4. disembedding
  5. disembeds
  6. disembellish
  7. disembellished
  8. disembellishes
  9. disembellishing
  10. disembitter
  11. disembittered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disembellish (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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