Word.ws English Dictionary

unpossess

unpossess verb: to be without, or to resign, possession of.

Verb

unpossess (third-person singular simple present unpossesses, present participle unpossessing, simple past and past participle unpossessed)

  1. (rare, transitive) To be without, or to resign, possession of.
    • This is a farce. Since when did I receive the gun (which is possessing it) and then unpossess it, and, then possess it again (all from 1984 to 1985) .1995, Kuffel V. United States of America, page 90
    • Users can select whether the Soul should continue to refer to the original Body (B_C on the host A) or it should unpossess the old Body and possess a one on the host B.1999, Proceedings: 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, page 203
  2. To free from an obsession that has taken hold of (someone)
    • The hold that is given over I unpossess, so hangeth now in balance Of war my peace, reward of all my pain, At Mountzon thus I restless rest in Spain.1879, Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, page 176
    • […] but she also exits as a new person, for to be free, she had to unpossess herself of her "possession," her passion.1985, Alice Eileen Jurish, And what is Fate But Love?

Examples of unpossess in a sentence

  • These two events are called when this player controller possesses and unpossesses a pawn.2021, Kassandra Arevalo, Matthew Tovar, Jingtian Li, Creating Games with Unreal Engine, Substance Painter, & Maya, pages 12-156:
  • She was posssessed, Nausicaa was, and no amount of reminding her of Odysseus's age and marital status could unpossess her .1987, Fiction - Volume 8, Issue 2, page 46:

Forms of unpossess

third-person singular presentunpossesses
present participleunpossessing
past participleunpossessed
pastunpossessed

Origin of unpossess

From un- + possess.

Questions about unpossess

What does unpossess mean?
Unpossess means to be without, or to resign, possession of.
How do you use unpossess in a sentence?
These two events are called when this player controller possesses and unpossesses a pawn.
What part of speech is unpossess?
Unpossess is a verb.
What is the past tense of unpossess?
The past tense of unpossess is unpossessed.

Words near unpossess in the dictionary

  1. unposh
  2. unposing
  3. unposited
  4. unpositioned
  5. unpositive
  6. unpossess
  7. unpossessable
  8. unpossessed
  9. unpossesses
  10. unpossessing
  11. unpossessive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpossess (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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