Unpack

//ʌnˈpæk// verb

verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and securely in a pack. transitive

    "They didn't have time to unpack their bags before going out to dinner."

  2. 2
    remove from its packing wordnet
  3. 3
    To empty containers that had been packed. intransitive

    "They didn't have time to unpack before going to dinner."

  4. 4
    To analyze a concept or a text; to explain. figuratively, transitive

    "There may be another argument here, if we had time to unpack it, about modernism and the rise of the middle classes."

  5. 5
    To undergo separation of its features into distinct segments. intransitive

    "The rounded vowels [y] and [œ/ə] in Russian seem to unpack as glide-vowel sequences in words borrowed from French and German, […]"

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  1. 6
    To decompress (data). transitive

    "Packages […] are often archived and compressed using the zip utility; you can unpack these with the unzip command[…]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
barebreak bulkbreak the sealbring to lightdevelopdisburden

Example

More examples

""Let's meet up outside for a date." "If you've got that much free time come and help unpack!""

Etymology

From Middle English unpakken, equivalent to un- + pack. Compare Saterland Frisian uutpakje (“to unpack”), West Frisian útpakke (“to unpack”), Dutch uitpakken (“to unpack”), German auspacken (“to unpack”).

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