unburn
unburn verb: to undergo the process of burning in reverse.
Verb
unburn (third-person singular simple present unburns, present participle unburning, simple past and past participle unburned)
- To undergo the process of burning in reverse.
- Similarly, you cannot 'unstir' the sugar from a cup of coffee once it has been dissolved, and you never see a pile of ash in the fireplace 'unburn' to become a log of wood again.2002, Jim Al-Khalili, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, page 122
- In your class last year we learned that increase in entropy is why matches burn but never unburn, why cans rust but never unrust, and why engines are never perfectly efficient.2009, Bradley Harris Dowden, The Metaphysics of Time: A Dialogue, page 122
Forms of unburn
| third-person singular present | unburns |
|---|---|
| present participle | unburning |
| past participle | unburned |
| past | unburned |
Origin of unburn
From un- + burn.
Questions about unburn
- What does unburn mean?
- Unburn means to undergo the process of burning in reverse.
- What part of speech is unburn?
- Unburn is a verb.
- What is the past tense of unburn?
- The past tense of unburn is unburned.
Words near unburn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unburn (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: “unburn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unburn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.