undomesticate means to undo domestication; to make wild after having been domesticated. It carries an Arena rating of 1510, earned across 249 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, undomesticate ranks #2,236 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #2,298 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #4,740 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #5,024 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
Why “undomesticate” is a great word
UNDOMESTICATE — [Verb] To reverse the process of domestication, returning a tamed or adapted creature to a state of wildness. From the English prefix un- (expressing reversal) + the verb domesticate (to tame or adapt for human use). First attested in the mid-1700s. Unlike "rewild," which implies a sweeping ecological restoration, or "feralize," which describes a passive reversion through abandonment, to undomesticate is a deliberate, active severance. It is the falconer releasing a trained hawk to the empty cliffs, the gardener allowing a grafted rose to reclaim its ancestral thorns, the careful unpicking of obedience from a dog's spine. It is the human hand laboriously unpicking a stitch it meant to be permanent.
Etymology
From un- + domesticate.
verb
- To undo domestication; to make wild after having been domesticated.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.