Word.ws English Dictionary

disincentivize

disincentivize verb: to discourage or demotivate by means of a disincentive.

Verb

disincentivize (third-person singular simple present disincentivizes, present participle disincentivizing, simple past and past participle disincentivized)

  1. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To discourage or demotivate by means of a disincentive.
    • The problem is that it would be difficult to use a joker offensively since you could never know how it was going to move, meaning it’d be most useful setting it up for potential queen/rook captures to disincentivize your opponent from moving those pieces.2018 October 12, aabicus, “My 7 Favorite Fairy Chess Pieces”, in The Daily SPUF, archived from the original on 02 Aug 2021
    • In the case of Ms. Peltola, her two Republican opponents, Ms. Palin and Nick Begich, went at each other hammer and tong, somehow missing the fact that they were disincentivizing their supporters from ranking either of them as their second choice.2023 January 5, Francine Kiefer, “‘We’re all on the same team’: Inside the Alaska model for US politics”, in The Christian Science Monitor, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2023
    Synonyms:
    deincentivize
    Antonyms:
    incentivize

Synonyms of disincentivize

Antonyms

Forms of disincentivize

third-person singular presentdisincentivizes
present participledisincentivizing
past participledisincentivized
pastdisincentivized
alternative formdisincentivise

Origin of disincentivize

From disincentive + -ize or dis- + incentivize.

Questions about disincentivize

What does disincentivize mean?
Disincentivize means to discourage or demotivate by means of a disincentive.
What part of speech is disincentivize?
Disincentivize is a verb.
What is the past tense of disincentivize?
The past tense of disincentivize is disincentivized.

Words near disincentivize in the dictionary

  1. disincentivise
  2. disincentivised
  3. disincentivises
  4. disincentivising
  5. disincentivization
  6. disincentivize
  7. disincentivized
  8. disincentivizes
  9. disincentivizing
  10. disinclination
  11. disinclinations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disincentivize (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.

Last updated:

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