Decompress

//diːkəmˈpɹɛs// verb, slang

verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To relieve the pressure or compression on something. transitive
  2. 2
    become less tense, rest, or take one's ease wordnet
  3. 3
    To bring someone (such as a diver) back to normal atmospheric pressure after being exposed to high pressure. transitive
  4. 4
    decrease the pressure of wordnet
  5. 5
    To restore (compressed data) to its original form. transitive
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    restore to its uncompressed form wordnet
  2. 7
    To adjust to normal atmospheric pressure after being exposed to high pressure. intransitive

    "The bad news is we got eight hours in this can blowin' down… And the worse news is, it's gonna take us three weeks to decompress later."

  3. 8
    To relax. informal, intransitive

    "[T]he idea began before lockdown, when he went on holiday to Thailand to decompress from the pressures of life in the music industry."

Synonyms

All synonyms
uncompressdepressurisedepressurizedepressurizeloosen uprelax

Example

More examples

"How do I decompress the LZH file?"

Etymology

From de- + compress.

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