Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unpack in a sentence

35 example sentences · verb

Unpack means to remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and securely in a pack. Example: “They didn't have time to unpack their bags before going out to dinner.”

Examples of unpack by meaning

verbTo remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and...

  • They didn't have time to unpack their bags before going out to dinner.

verbTo empty containers that had been packed.

  • They didn't have time to unpack before going to dinner.

verbTo analyze a concept or a text; to explain.

  • There may be another argument here, if we had time to unpack it, about modernism and the rise of the middle classes.2013 September 20, Anne Enright, “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride – review”, in The Guardian
  • Let’s try to unpack a few of the complexities.2019 October 17, Steven Rattner, “Unpacking the Trade Deficit”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  • From a gender reveal to a secret ceremony and rifts with other royal family members, there was a lot to unpack from the interview2021 March 8, Helen Sullivan, “Meghan and Harry: 12 things we learned from the Oprah special”, in The Guardian

verbTo undergo separation of its features into distinct segments.

  • The objective of these corpora was to check whether vowels other than nasal vowels systematically unpack in L1s that do not allow them.2011, John A. Goldsmith, Jason Riggle, Alan C. L. Yu, editors, The Handbook of Phonological Theory

More sentences with unpack

  • Be careful not to damage any of the fragile items while unpacking them.From the entry damage
  • I worked all day and managed to get all the boxes unpacked.From the entry unpacked
  • Unpacking took the best part of a week.From the entry best
  • The unpacked gifts are on the table.From the entry unpacked
  • I’ve dedicated myself to unpacking my own story, mostly out of sight of semicurious onlookers and algorithms.2022 October 11, Stephanie Eisler Vance, “When Facebook Actually Broke My Brain”, in The New York Times. From the entry semicurious
  • Unpacking the success of Balletcore, Bikercore, Normcore and Gorpcore with considerations for future assortments.2022 summer, “What’s Actually Selling When Everything Is Trending?”, in Apparel, →ISSN, page 22. From the entry balletcore
  • I unpacked the parcels at once with an eager birthdayish feeling.2015, Nancy Buckingham, Return to Vienna. From the entry birthdayish
  • We could unpack the car and go back to our lives—a staycation in our own home.2014 November, Paula Treick DeBoard, “Curtis”, in The Fragile World, Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Mira, →ISBN, page 108. From the entry staycation
  • It answers this question by unpacking the epistemic regimes that underpin the move to resilience.2014, Claudia Aradau, “The promise of security: resilience, surprise and epistemic politics”, in Resilience, volume 2, number 2, →DOI…. From the entry epistemic regime
  • We can talk boys, compare class schedules, and maybe do some unpacking and decorating?”2012, Jessica Burkhart, Initiation, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 37. From the entry shoppe
  • He unpacked the billycan from his old rucksack and I got out the tea and sugar.1997, Ian Player, Zulu Wilderness: Shadow and Soul, page 69. From the entry billycan
  • That she could unpack, decode, index, retrieve, and interpret my reference at all was an unmodelable miracle.1995, Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2, Vintage (2019), page 198. From the entry unmodelable
  • Dearie unpacks her baggage, hits the night spots, and sings in a soothing supper-club style.1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 13. From the entry supper club
  • Moreover, neuromixed teams often explore new methodological approaches that incorporate neurodivergent experiences thus unpacking the space from varied perspectives.2025 May 30, Etain Quigley, Tara Gallagher, “Neurodiversity and higher education: double masking by neurodivergent students”, in European…. From the entry neuromixed
  • Like the Kremlinology of the cold war, the unpacking of Nasrallah’s careful ambiguities is as much art as science.2024 January 7, “Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran … how far could war in the Middle East spread?”, in the Guardian. From the entry Kremlinology
  • Her father had long been a student of onomastics, and loved to unpack the names of people they encountered as children.2024, Susie Dent, Guilty By Definition, Zaffre, page 65. From the entry onomastics
  • Finding her toothbrush last night had been the extent of her unpacking and her slippers were still missing in action.2017, Tracy Rees, The Hourglass. From the entry missing in action
  • What would compel a viewer to subscribe to the all-coffee channel and binge-watch a guy unpacking coffee makers?2014 February 13, Heather Kelly, “The bizarre, lucrative world of ‘unboxing’ videos”, in CNN. From the entry viewer
  • Bags are no sooner unpacked in the prime ministerial suite than it's down to tin tacks: to implementation.2013 October 25, Katharine Murphy, “Andrew Bolt v Tony Abbott: all very amiable – up to a point”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The…. From the entry what say you
  • All this requires some very careful unpacking, for obviously, Dr.2008, Joseph P. Farrell, Nazi International, →ISBN. From the entry nazi
  • He was unpacking too, though as coyly and delayingly as he had undressed that day at the Highgate Ponds.2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 11, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN. From the entry delayingly
  • Total time to unpack the landing pod after moonfall is one working year, conducted in parallel with paving and other activities.1981, Space Manufacturing, volume 4, page 115. From the entry moonfall
  • By studying the history of automating video on streaming platforms and advancing a theory of the unbingeable, I further unpack the multiple meanings of access.2025, Neta Alexander, “The Right to Speed Watch (or, When Netflix Discovered Its Blind Users)”, in Interface Frictions: How Digital…. From the entry unbingeable
  • Repeated rhetorical questions can move from general to specific, from short to long, from broad to narrow, but should always unpack like Russian dolls.2018, Danyal Freeman, Seductive Academic Writing, page 83. From the entry epiplexis
  • She unpacked her laptop and then set to work, looking up business services, cleaners and dejunkers to come by and start working on the house.2018, Susan Lund, The Girl From Paradise Hill. From the entry dejunker
  • Stock-image lapwings and stock-image grebes were added to cloudless, unraining skies; and in driveways stock-image residents unpacked groceries from their stock-image cars.2016 January 18, Stuart Evers, Your Father Sends His Love: Stories, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN. From the entry unraining
  • By the time I had unpacked my sea bag, made my rack, and finished a good long hot shower, it was late in the evening.2010, Herb Brewer, Chronicles of a Marine Rifleman: Vietnam, 1965-1966, →ISBN, page 171. From the entry rack
  • The benefit of packed malware, from a malicious author's point of view, is that it cannot be analyzed until it is properly unpacked.2007, David Harley, AVIEN malware defense guide for the Enterprise, page 408. From the entry unpacker
  • My father gleefully took this as a challenge to his tennis skill, unpacked his racquet, and swacked every flying mammal within reach.2005, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, The Last Full Moon: Lessons on My Life. From the entry swack

Meaning of unpack

  1. verb To remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and securely in a pack.
  2. verb To empty containers that had been packed.
  3. verb To analyze a concept or a text; to explain.

Full definition of unpack

Questions about unpack in a sentence

How do you use unpack in a sentence?
Unpack is used as a verb. For example: “They didn't have time to unpack their bags before going out to dinner.”
What is a short sentence with unpack?
“The unpacked gifts are on the table.”
What does unpack mean?
Unpack means to remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and securely in a pack.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpack (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use unpack in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/unpack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.