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unhinge

/ʌnˈhɪnd͡ʒ/verb

unhinge is a verb meaning “To remove the leaf of a door or a window from its supporting hinges” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-N-H-I-N-G-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does unhinge mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To remove the leaf of a door or a window from its supporting hinges.

  2. 2

    To dislocate.

    Many snakes can unhinge their jaw joints to swallow large prey.

  3. 3

    To mentally disturb.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce unhinge?

  • /ʌnˈhɪnd͡ʒ/

Unhinge has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-unhinge.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of unhinge

  • unhinges present, singular, he/she/it
  • unhinging participle, present
  • unhinged participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is unhinge?

Unhinge appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 124,184th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Unhinge in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdégonder (remove a leaf from its supporting hinges), déséquilibrer, troubler, sortir de ses gonds (to mentally disturb)
Germanaus den Angeln heben (remove a leaf from its supporting hinges)
Spanishdesquiciar, desgoznar (remove a leaf from its supporting hinges), trastornar, barahustar, barajustar (to mentally disturb)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does unhinge come from?

From un- + hinge.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).