Dictionary

unbe en · VERB

Etymology

From un- + be.

Meanings

1. (no-past, poetic, rare, transitive) To deprive (someone or something) of being; to make nonexistent.
2. (intransitive, no-past, poetic, rare) To lack being; to be nonexistent.
   • There is a saying that unseen is as good as unbeen; but in this case it was otherwise—unseen, Master Malrubius was more palpably present than ever before. 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXXIII, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 280:
   • I cannot bear my fate as writ, / I'd have my life unbe; / Would turn my memory to a blot, / Make every relic of me rot, / My doings be as they were not, / And what they've brought to me! 1901, Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and the Present, Edinburgh & London: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., page 234:

Forms