Word.ws English Dictionary

unwound

Syllables: un·wound/ʌnˈwaʊnd/

unwound is the simple past and past participle of unwind.

Meaning of unwind

Verb

unwind (third-person singular simple present unwinds, present participle unwinding, simple past and past participle unwound)

  1. (transitive) To separate (something that is wound up)
    • to unwind a ball of yarn
    Synonyms:
    untwist, untwine
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To disentangle
    • […]but being not so skilful as in every point to unwind themselves where the snares of glossing speech do lie to entangle them,[…]1836, Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker, volume 4, page 27
  3. (colloquial, intransitive) To relax; to chill out; to rest and become relieved of stress
    • After work, I like to unwind by smoking a pipe while reading the paper.
  4. (intransitive) To be or become unwound; to be capable of being unwound or untwisted.
  5. (transitive) To close out a position, especially a complicated position.
  6. (transitive) To undo something.

See all 10 meanings of unwind

Verb

IPA/ʌnˈwuːnd/

unwound (third-person singular simple present unwounds, present participle unwounding, simple past and past participle unwounded)

  1. (rare, transitive) to make (someone’s) wounds go away, to heal
    • The time travelling episode offers us restored wholeness of many kinds, ranging from physical (the ‘unwounding’ of wounded men) to spiritual and metaphysical (our transcending the tragedy of before and after).1999, R. Norrman, “Creating the World in Our Image: A New Theory of Love of Symmetry and Iconicist Desire”, in M. Nänny, O. Fischer, editors, Form Miming Meaning, page 62
    • "When I'm wounded, I go after people hard and I try to unwound myself," Trump said in a much-anticipated interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly that aired Tuesday night on Fox.2016 May 17, G. Morrongiello, “Trump: I wound people to 'unwound myself'”, in Washington Examiner

Forms of unwound

third-person singular presentunwounds
present participleunwounding
past participleunwounded
pastunwounded

Origin of unwound

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

From un- + wound (“to hurt”). Possibly backformed from the more common unwounded.

Words that rhyme with unwound

45 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about unwound

What does unwound mean?
Unwound means to make (someone’s) wounds go away, to heal.
What is unwound the simple past and past participle of?
Unwound is the simple past and past participle of unwind.
What part of speech is unwound?
Unwound is a verb.
How do you pronounce unwound?
Unwound is pronounced /ʌnˈwaʊnd/.
What is the past tense of unwound?
The past tense of unwound is unwounded.

Words near unwound in the dictionary

  1. unworthness
  2. unworthwhile
  3. unworthy
  4. unworthyness
  5. unwotting
  6. unwound
  7. unwoundable
  8. unwounded
  9. unwove
  10. unwoven
  11. unwowable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unwound (page history and authors); unwind (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-unwound.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-unwound.wav.

Cite this entry: “unwound.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unwound. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.