Word.ws English Dictionary

unarrest

unarrest verb: to release (an arrested person) from custody.

Verb

unarrest (third-person singular simple present unarrests, present participle unarresting, simple past and past participle unarrested)

  1. (transitive) To release (an arrested person) from custody.
    • She was swearing at the police who were trying to deal with a domestic incident. I had to break up the situation, the harassment was interfering with them dealing with the original fight. It was decided to unarrest her when we realised her age.2010, Gabrielle M. Maxwell, Allison Morris, Family, Victims and Culture: Youth Justice in New Zealand, page 33
    • They were subsequently unarrested and released into their parents’ custody on Friday evening.2015, “Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said two teenage brothers arrested while trying to leave Australia to fight with ISIS were ‘saved’”, in News.com.au

Noun

unarrest (plural unarrests)

  1. The act of cancelling an arrest.
    • However, it has been suggested to the Committee that police will not utilise this power because there will be a fear of the "unarrest" being used as evidence of a wrongful arrest.1994, Queensland. Parliament. Legislative Assembly, Parliamentary Papers - Volume 3, page 223
    • Several unarrests, and only two total successful arrests, occurred at the Navy Memorial.2017, Matthew Knouff, An Outsider's Guide to Antifa, page 156

Forms of unarrest

Verb
third-person singular presentunarrests
present participleunarresting
past participleunarrested
pastunarrested
Noun
pluralunarrests

Origin of unarrest

From un- + arrest.

Questions about unarrest

What does unarrest mean?
Unarrest means to release (an arrested person) from custody.
What part of speech is unarrest?
Unarrest can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of unarrest?
The past tense of unarrest is unarrested.

Words near unarrest in the dictionary

  1. unarranged
  2. unarray
  3. unarrayed
  4. unarraying
  5. unarrays
  6. unarrest
  7. unarrestability
  8. unarrestable
  9. unarrested
  10. unarresting
  11. unarrests

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unarrest (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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