Disown

//dɪsˈoʊn// verb

verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To refuse to own, or to refuse to acknowledge one’s own. transitive

    "Lord Capulet and his wife threatened to disown their daughter Juliet if she didn’t go through with marrying Count Paris."

  2. 2
    cast off wordnet
  3. 3
    To repudiate any connection to; to renounce. transitive

    "He disowns me, and he scorns me / But when we're alone he tells me I'm his very own"

  4. 4
    prevent deliberately (as by making a will) from inheriting wordnet
  5. 5
    To detach (a job or process) so that it can continue to run even when the user who launched it ends his/her login session. Unix, transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
disavowdisinheritrenouncerenouncerepudiateabdicate

Example

More examples

""As, scared the Phrygian ranks to see, / confused, unarmed, amid the gazing throng, / he stood, 'Alas! what spot on earth or sea / is left,' he cried, 'to shield a wretch like me, / whom Dardans seek in punishment to kill, / and Greeks disown?'""

Etymology

From dis- + own.

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