Word.ws English Dictionary

undesign

undesign verb: to reverse or fail to implement a design; to design something in a way that deliberately rejects the conventions of designing.

Verb

undesign (third-person singular simple present undesigns, present participle undesigning, simple past and past participle undesigned)

  1. To reverse or fail to implement a design; to design something in a way that deliberately rejects the conventions of designing.
    • When not to design and when to undesign? When should we refuse to design something? Are there situations when the use of a particular technology, or even of any technology, is not beneficial?Håkan Gulliksson, Pervasive Computing Design for Sustainability: 2nd Edition (page 518)
    • If there is a design in these actions, it is to undesign—to provide supplies for recirculation and recontextualization in which a new meaning may be found.2010, Joel B. Altman, The Improbability of Othello, page 215

Noun

undesign (uncountable)

  1. The act or process of deliberately undesigning.
    • Although it may seem as if undesign calls for the elimination of discipline or intention, to the contrary, undesign thinking guides designers from any knowledge base or perspective to enact their crafts for the full diversity of product users, art viewers, space occupants, and so forth, rather than...2014, Elizabeth DePoy, Stephen Gilson, Branding and Designing Disability, page 224

Forms of undesign

third-person singular presentundesigns
present participleundesigning
past participleundesigned
pastundesigned

Origin of undesign

From un- + design.

Questions about undesign

What does undesign mean?
Undesign means to reverse or fail to implement a design; to design something in a way that deliberately rejects the conventions of designing.
What part of speech is undesign?
Undesign can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of undesign?
The past tense of undesign is undesigned.

Words near undesign in the dictionary

  1. undeserves
  2. undeserving
  3. undeserving poor
  4. undeservingly
  5. undeservingness
  6. undesign
  7. undesignable
  8. undesignated
  9. undesigned
  10. undesignedly
  11. undesignedness

Source and license

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