Word.ws English Dictionary

unskein

unskein verb: to unwind from a skein.

Verb

unskein (third-person singular simple present unskeins, present participle unskeining, simple past and past participle unskeined)

  1. To unwind from a skein
    • "Jess ... is assisting the hostess to unskein yarn and wind into a ball"2003, Kay Armatage, The Girl from God's Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent, page 56
  2. To unfurl, as if from a skein
    • "In the sunshine his [Custer's] locks unskeined, stream a foot behind him"1865, American Newspaper

Forms of unskein

third-person singular presentunskeins
present participleunskeining
past participleunskeined
pastunskeined

Origin of unskein

From skein.

Questions about unskein

What does unskein mean?
Unskein means to unwind from a skein.
What part of speech is unskein?
Unskein is a verb.
What is the past tense of unskein?
The past tense of unskein is unskeined.

Words near unskein in the dictionary

  1. unsizeable
  2. unsizeableness
  3. unsized
  4. unskaithed
  5. unskated
  6. unskein
  7. unskeined
  8. unskeining
  9. unskeins
  10. unskeletonized
  11. unskeptical

Source and license

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