unleash

present singular third person unleashes · participle present unleashing · participle past unleashed · past unleashed

1. transitiveTo free from a leash, or as from a leash.

   He unleashed his dog in the park.

   1 more example

   Somewhat unsurprisingly, unleashing the most powerful navy on the planet with carte blanche to exterminate slavers on sight saw a dramatic and sudden collapse in slaver numbers in the late 1840s and early 1850s.

   2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 10:12 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron, archived from the original on 29 Nov 2024

   Antonyms: leash, leash up

2. figurativelyTo let go; to release.

   He unleashed his fury.

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   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.

   1999, Vivian Patraka, Spectacular Suffering: Theatre, Fascism, and the Holocaust

   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.

   2011 October 1, John Sinnott, “Aston Villa 2 - 0 Wigan”, in BBC Sport

   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.

   2012 April 4, Sam Anderson, “Just One More Game ...”, in The New York Times Magazine

   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.

   2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58

3. figurativelyTo precipitate; to bring about.

   Even if it were working perfectly, the stimulus would not come close to stemming the cascade of joblessness unleashed by this megarecession.

   2009 July 11, Bob Herbert, “The Human Equation”, in The New York Times

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   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?

   2013 April 9, Andrei Lankov, “Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff.”, in The New York Times