Wiktionary

unleash

English

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Etymology

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From un- ‎ leash.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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unleash (third-person singular simple present unleashes, present participle unleashing, simple past and past participle unleashed)

  1. (transitive) To free from a leash, or as from a leash.
    Antonyms: leash, leash up
    He unleashed his dog in the park.
  2. (figurative) To let go; to release.
    He unleashed his fury.
    • 1999, Vivian Patraka, Spectacular Suffering: Theatre, Fascism, and the Holocaust:
      It is the goneness of the Holocaust that produces the simultaneous profusion of discourses and understandings; the goneness is what opens up, what spurs, what unleashes the perpetual desire to do, to make, to rethink the Holocaust.
    • 2011 October 1, John Sinnott, “Aston Villa 2 - 0 Wigan”, in BBC Sport‎[1]:
      As Bent pulled away to the far post, Agbonlahor opted to go it alone, motoring past Gary Caldwell before unleashing a shot into the roof of the net.
    • 2012 April 4, Sam Anderson, “Just One More Game ...”, in The New York Times Magazine‎[2]:
      In 1989, as communism was beginning to crumble across Eastern Europe, just a few months before protesters started pecking away at the Berlin Wall, the Japanese game-making giant Nintendo reached across the world to unleash upon America its own version of freedom.
    • 2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58:
      Storm Charlie had raged throught [sic] the night and was unleashing further gusts on the morning that RAIL was due to inspect a vegetation management project in Kent. Bit by bit, the train timetable unravelled. A trip beginning at Bradford-on-Avon belatedly reached Bath, but that turned out to be journey's end.
  3. (figurative) To precipitate; to bring about.
    • 2009 July 11, Bob Herbert, “The Human Equation”, in The New York Times‎[3]:
      Even if it were working perfectly, the stimulus would not come close to stemming the cascade of joblessness unleashed by this megarecession.
    • 2013 April 9, Andrei Lankov, “Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff.”, in The New York Times‎[4]:
      People who talk about an imminent possibility of war seldom pose this question: What would North Korea’s leadership get from unleashing a war that they are likely to lose in weeks, if not days?

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