Disembarrass

/ˌdɪs.ɛmˈbæɹ.əs/ · verb

Meaning

To get (someone) out of a difficult or embarrassing situation; to free (someone) from the embarrassment (of a situation); (often reflexive) to relieve (someone of a burden, item of clothing, etc.)..

Definitions by Sense

1. To get (someone) out of a difficult or embarrassing situation; to free (someone) from the embarrassment (of a situation); (often reflexive) to relieve (someone of a burden, item of clothing, etc.).
2. (obsolete) To free (something) from complication.
3. (obsolete) To disentangle (two things); to distinguish.

Example Sentences

1726, George Berkeley, letter to Thomas Prior dated 6 February, 1726, in The Works of George Berkeley, London: G. Robinson, Volume 1, p. xliv, […] I hope […] that you will have disembarrassed yourself of all sort of business that may detain you here, and so be ready to go with us […]

He had now disembarrassed himself of his riding-dress, and walking up to his daughter, he undid the fastening of her mask.

Whatever was her meaning, her purpose seemed unalterably adopted ; at least, it was plain he had no power to shake it. He must therefore wait till the end of their short voyage, to disembarrass himself of his companion ; and, in the meanwhile, acting on the idea of her having harboured a misplaced attachment to him, he thought he should best consult her interest, and his own character, in keeping at as great a distance from her as circumstances admitted.

Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony […]

The forthright adolescent heroine of that book, wanting to know what is this thing “love” so vaunted in fiction and so warned against by her elders, hires a strapping young peasant to disembarrass her of her virginity.

[…] Pat, in another sense, had done nothing for him; Nick hadn’t liked his brand of cagey camp, and had been snotty and priggish with him: so that, more shamefully still, he felt subtly disembarrassed by the death, since it erased the memory of his own bad grace.

1719, uncredited editor, A Collection of Tracts Concerning Predestination and Providence, Cambridge University Press, Preface, […] that we might disembarrass the Style as much as possible, we have taken the liberty to transpose Parentheses and other perplexed Passages, so as to clear and reduce them to continued Sentences.

1783, Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Dublin: Whitestone et al., Volume 1, Lecture 8, pp. 180-181, There is no doubt that, by abolishing cases, we have rendered the structure of modern Languages more simple. We have disembarrassed it of all the intricacy which arose from the different forms of declension, of which the Romans had no fewer than five; and from all the irregularities in these several declensions.

Synonyms for disembarrass

Antonyms for disembarrass

Related Words

Word Forms

• disembarrasses
• disembarrassing
• disembarrassed

Usage Notes

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