unleash

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To free from a leash, or as from a leash.

   • He unleashed his dog in the park.
   • Somewhat unsurprisingly, unleashing the most powerful navy on the planet with carte blanche to exterminate slavers on sight saw a dramatic and sudden collapse in slaver numbers in the late 1840s and early 1850s.
2. 2

   To let go

   To let go; to release.

   • He unleashed his fury.
   • It is the goneness of the Holocaust that produces the simultaneous profusion of discourses and understandings; the goneness is what opens up, what spurs, what unleashes the perpetual desire to do, to make, to rethink the Holocaust.
   • As Bent pulled away to the far post, Agbonlahor opted to go it alone, motoring past Gary Caldwell before unleashing a shot into the roof of the net.
3. 3

   To precipitate

   To precipitate; to bring about.

   • Even if it were working perfectly, the stimulus would not come close to stemming the cascade of joblessness unleashed by this megarecession.
   • People who talk about an imminent possibility of war seldom pose this question: What would North Korea’s leadership get from unleashing a war that they are likely to lose in weeks, if not days?

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