Word.ws English Dictionary

unemploy

unemploy verb: to cause someone to become unemployed.

Verb

unemploy (third-person singular simple present unemploys, present participle unemploying, simple past and past participle unemployed)

  1. (transitive) To cause someone to become unemployed.
    • In addition, new technologies are adopted which are less labour-using, thus unemploying workers. Over the postwar years, factors of this sort have contributed to a gradual upward drift in unemployment rates, even during expansions.1978, Fred Caloren, Michel Chossudovsky, Paul Gingrich, Is the Canadian Economy Closing Down?, Black Rose Books Ltd., →ISBN, page 88
    • It is, however, a reality that some developers are concerned that code generators and the like will "unemploy" them.1987, Advance Papers, IEEE Computer Society Press

Examples of unemploy in a sentence

  • One of the first things they'll edit out of the human genome is myopia, and diabetes and that — " "It'll unemploy you before it unemploys me, Professor," Cathy said with an impish smile.1997, Tom Clancy, Executive Orders, Penguin, →ISBN, page 385:
  • It is increasingly technology based and “unemploys” people at a dramatic rate.1999, Gregory Cajete, A People's Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living, Book Marketing Group, →ISBN, page 67:
  • If one word of this appears in your tabloid, I will use all my wealth and connections to shut it down and unemploy you permanently.”2009, Shayla Black, Seduce Me In Shadow, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 167:

Forms of unemploy

third-person singular presentunemploys
present participleunemploying
past participleunemployed
pastunemployed

Origin of unemploy

From un- + employ.

Questions about unemploy

What does unemploy mean?
Unemploy means to cause someone to become unemployed.
How do you use unemploy in a sentence?
One of the first things they'll edit out of the human genome is myopia, and diabetes and that — " "It'll unemploy you before it unemploys me, Professor," Cathy said with an impish smile.
What part of speech is unemploy?
Unemploy is a verb.
What is the past tense of unemploy?
The past tense of unemploy is unemployed.

Words near unemploy in the dictionary

  1. unemphatic
  2. unemphatical
  3. unemphatically
  4. unempirical
  5. unempirically
  6. unemploy
  7. unemployability
  8. unemployable
  9. unemployableness
  10. unemployables
  11. unemployably

Source and license

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