DISOWN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does disown mean? 

• DISOWN (verb)
  The verb DISOWN has 2 senses:

1. prevent deliberately (as by making a will) from inheriting

2. cast off

  Familiarity information: DISOWN used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISOWN (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they disown    ... he / she / it disowns   
Past simple: disowned   
Past participle: disowned   
-ing form: disowning   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Prevent deliberately (as by making a will) from inheriting

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Synonyms:

disinherit; disown

Hypernyms (to "disown" is one way to...):

deprive (keep from having, keeping, or obtaining)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

disowning; disownment (refusal to acknowledge as one's own)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cast off

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

disown; renounce; repudiate

Context example:

The parents repudiated their son

Hypernyms (to "disown" is one way to...):

reject (refuse to accept or acknowledge)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "disown"):

apostatise; apostatize; tergiversate (abandon one's beliefs or allegiances)

abjure; forswear; recant; resile; retract (formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief, usually under pressure)

swallow; take back; unsay; withdraw (take back what one has said)

rebut; refute (overthrow by argument, evidence, or proof)

deny (refuse to accept or believe)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

 Context examples 

Neither shall I disown, that in speaking I am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the Houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that account, without the least mortification.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

With him rode the King of Majorca, the hostage King of Navarre, and the fierce Don Pedro of Spain, whose pale blue eyes gleamed with a sinister light as they rested once more upon the distant peaks of the land which had disowned him.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“When I left her in America,” she continued, “it was only because her health was weak, and the change might have done her harm. She was given to the care of a faithful Scotch woman who had once been our servant. Never for an instant did I dream of disowning her as my child. But when chance threw you in my way, Jack, and I learned to love you, I feared to tell you about my child. God forgive me, I feared that I should lose you, and I had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl. For three years I have kept her existence a secret from you, but I heard from the nurse, and I knew that all was well with her. At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain. Though I knew the danger, I determined to have the child over, if it were but for a few weeks. I sent a hundred pounds to the nurse, and I gave her instructions about this cottage, so that she might come as a neighbour, without my appearing to be in any way connected with her. I pushed my precautions so far as to order her to keep the child in the house during the daytime, and to cover up her little face and hands so that even those who might see her at the window should not gossip about there being a black child in the neighbourhood. If I had been less cautious I might have been more wise, but I was half crazy with fear that you should learn the truth.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Well," resumed Mr. Rochester, "if you disown parents, you must have some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)