Word.ws English Dictionary

uncoat

uncoat verb: (of the capsid shell) to dissociate from the viral core in the host cell cytoplasm.

Verb

uncoat (third-person singular simple present uncoats, present participle uncoating, simple past and past participle uncoated)

  1. (intransitive) (of the capsid shell) to dissociate from the viral core in the host cell cytoplasm
    • It takes only minutes, after entry into a cell, for a virus particle to uncoat.
  2. (transitive) To remove the viral capsid of a virus, leading to the release of the viral genomic nucleic acid.

Forms of uncoat

third-person singular presentuncoats
present participleuncoating
past participleuncoated
pastuncoated

Origin of uncoat

From un- + coat.

Questions about uncoat

What does uncoat mean?
Uncoat means (of the capsid shell) to dissociate from the viral core in the host cell cytoplasm.
What part of speech is uncoat?
Uncoat is a verb.
What is the past tense of uncoat?
The past tense of uncoat is uncoated.

Words near uncoat in the dictionary

  1. uncoalesced
  2. uncoalesces
  3. uncoalescing
  4. uncoarse
  5. uncoarsened
  6. uncoat
  7. uncoatable
  8. uncoated
  9. uncoated free sheet
  10. uncoated free sheets
  11. uncoating

Source and license

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