Skip to main content
PlainSpell

unwind

/ʌnˈwaɪnd/verb, noun

unwind is spelled U-N-W-I-N-D: 6 letters and 2 syllables. It appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 25,751st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a verb, unwind means “To separate (something that is wound up)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).

How many letters and syllables are in unwind?

Letters6: U-N-W-I-N-D
Syllables2 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1.2 times per million words; the 25,751st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How common is unwind?

Unwind appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 25,751st 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).

How do you pronounce unwind?

  • /ʌnˈwaɪnd/

Unwind 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: En-au-unwind.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of unwind

  • unwinds present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • unwinding participle, present
  • unwound participle, past

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

What does unwind mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To separate (something that is wound up)

    to unwind a ball of yarn

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo disentangle

  3. 3

    colloquialTo relax; to chill out; to rest and become relieved of stress

    After work, I like to unwind by smoking a pipe while reading the paper.

  4. 4

    To be or become unwound; to be capable of being unwound or untwisted.

  5. 5

    To close out a position, especially a complicated position.

  6. 6

    To undo something.

  7. 7

    To navigate back through (a call stack) so as to generate a stack trace etc.

  8. 8

    Synonym of unroll (“replace a loop with a sequence”).

noun

  1. 1

    Any mechanism or operation that unwinds something.

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

Unwind in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdérouler, débobiner (to wind off), démêler (to disentangle), décompresser (to relax), se défaire (to be or become unwound)
Germanabwickeln, loswickeln, abspulen, abdocken (textil.) (to wind off), entwirren (to disentangle), abschalten (to relax)
Portuguesedesenrolar (to wind off), desembaraçar (to disentangle), espairecer (to relax)
Spanishdesenrollar (to wind off), relajarse (to relax)

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 unwind come from?

From Middle English unwinden, from Old English unwindan (“to unwind; unwrap”), from Proto-Germanic *andawindaną (“to unwind”); equivalent to un- + wind (“to coil”). Cognate with Dutch ontwinden (“to unwind”).

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

What to look up after unwind