Word.ws English Dictionary

unchild

unchild verb: to make (someone) childless.

Verb

unchild (third-person singular simple present unchilds, present participle unchilding, simple past and past participle unchilded)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To make (someone) childless.
    • Though in this city he / Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, / Which to this hour bewail the injury, / Yet he shall have a noble memory.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • No appetite, that like the unchilded sea / […] hungers for such orts / As riot spares lean want, is yet so wide, / So vast of ravin or so blind in scope, / As can abide the chewed and perished meats / That relish died upon.1860, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Rosamond. A Play.”, in The Queen-mother. Rosamond. Two Plays, London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], →OCLC, Act IV, page 201

Forms of unchild

third-person singular presentunchilds
present participleunchilding
past participleunchilded
pastunchilded

Origin of unchild

From un- + child.

Questions about unchild

What does unchild mean?
Unchild means to make (someone) childless.
What part of speech is unchild?
Unchild is a verb.
What is the past tense of unchild?
The past tense of unchild is unchilded.

Words near unchild in the dictionary

  1. unchidden
  2. unchided
  3. unchiding
  4. unchidingly
  5. unchiefly
  6. unchild
  7. unchilded
  8. unchilding
  9. unchildish
  10. unchildishly
  11. unchildishness

Source and license

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