Word.ws English Dictionary

disimprove

disimprove verb: to make worse.

Verb

disimprove (third-person singular simple present disimproves, present participle disimproving, simple past and past participle disimproved)

  1. (rare, transitive) To make worse.
    • To which may be added this advantage, that the services of churchmen are rewardable upon the church's stock: no need to disimprove the royal banks to pay thanks to bishops.1642, Jeremy Taylor, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy or Episcopacy Asserted against the Arians and Acephali New and Old
  2. (intransitive, rare) To deteriorate.
  3. (informal, rare, influenced by the German verb verschlimmbessern) To try to make something better but end up making it worse.

Forms of disimprove

third-person singular presentdisimproves
present participledisimproving
past participledisimproved
pastdisimproved

Origin of disimprove

From dis- + improve.

Questions about disimprove

What does disimprove mean?
Disimprove means to make worse.
What part of speech is disimprove?
Disimprove is a verb.
What is the past tense of disimprove?
The past tense of disimprove is disimproved.

Words near disimprove in the dictionary

  1. disimprisons
  2. disimpropriate
  3. disimpropriated
  4. disimpropriates
  5. disimpropriating
  6. disimprove
  7. disimproved
  8. disimprovement
  9. disimprovements
  10. disimproves
  11. disimproving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disimprove (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: “disimprove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/disimprove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.