Prebunk

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of prebunking.

    "[Twitter] will also publish so-called ‘prebunks’ specific to potentially misleading information on vaccines, they said."

Verb
  1. 1
    To counter potential misinformation by warning people against it before it is disseminated.

    "They predicted that the warning would work by “pre-bunking” the false information that may come someone's way (rather than debunking it afterward). […] However, if the fake petition was “pre-bunked” with a vaccine, subjects held on to their higher estimation of a scientific consensus."

Example

More examples

"They predicted that the warning would work by “pre-bunking” the false information that may come someone's way (rather than debunking it afterward). […] However, if the fake petition was “pre-bunked” with a vaccine, subjects held on to their higher estimation of a scientific consensus."

Etymology

Blend of pre- + debunk. By surface analysis, pre- + bunk.

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