verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To discourage someone by removing their enthusiasm or courage. transitive

   "The repeated failures began to dishearten the team."

2. 2
   take away the enthusiasm of wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

discouragedismayabashanticipateavertawe

Antonyms

All antonyms

empowerencourageheartenincite

Example

More examples

"Do understand, Mrs. Smith, we must encourage the children, and not dishearten them."

Etymology

From dis- + hearten.

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