De-

//diː// prefix

prefix ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Prefix
  1. 1
    reversal, undoing morpheme

    "de- + couple → decouple"

  2. 2
    Unisex prefix used in African-American given names. US, morpheme

    "De- + Shawna → DeShawna"

  3. 3
    to remove from, removed morpheme

    "de- + bus → debus"

  4. 4
    Intensifying morpheme

    "de- + fraud → defraud"

  5. 5
    derived from, of morpheme

    "de- + substantival → desubstantival"

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  1. 6
    down, downward morpheme

    "de- + scando → descend"

Synonyms

All synonyms
unabapoawaydesdis

Antonyms

All antonyms
emre

Example

More examples

"de- + arterialization → dearterialization"

Etymology

From Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (“of”, “from”). For sense development, compare Old English æf-, which was a similar prefix.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.