unpack

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unpack

/ʌnˈpæk/

Rhymes with -æk

Where it comes from

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”).

verb unpacks · unpacking · unpacked

transitive To remove from a package or container, particularly with respect to items that had previously been arranged closely and securely in a pack. They didn't have time to unpack their bags before going out to dinner.
intransitive To empty containers that had been packed. They didn't have time to unpack before going to dinner.
figuratively, transitive To analyze a concept or a text; to explain. There may be another argument here, if we had time to unpack it, about modernism and the rise of the middle classes.
intransitive, of a segment such as a vowel To undergo separation of its features into distinct segments. The rounded vowels [y] and [œ/ə] in Russian seem to unpack as glide-vowel sequences in words borrowed from French and German, […]
transitive To decompress (data). Packages […] are often archived and compressed using the zip utility; you can unpack these with the unzip command[…]

Opposite: pack

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: take out, untie, undo, lose, range, unpackage, depackage, unparcel, depalletize, unbox, depack, break bulk, unbag, debag, pull out, strip

verb

Opposite: pack

Translations

Every language

verb to remove from a package

Español	desempacar, deshacer, desempaquetar
日本語	解く hodoku
中文	拆開 /拆开 chāikāi, 解開 /解开 jiěkāi
Português	desempacotar
Français	déballer, dépaqueter
Deutsch	entpacken, auspacken
Italiano	sballare, disimballare
Русский	распако́вывать raspakóvyvatʹ, распакова́ть raspakovátʹ

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MLA

"unpack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/unpack. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

unpack. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/unpack

Chicago

"unpack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/unpack.

BibTeX

@misc{unpack_2026,
  title = {unpack},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/unpack},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}