Unmaken

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To bring to ruin or reduce something that was previously created or built back to nothing
2. To cause the undoing or destruction of a thing so that it no longer exists in its made form
3. Archaic term meaning to take apart or annihilate something that had been brought into being

Etymology: "Unmake" is built from the prefix "un-" and the verb "make," and the pairing is older than most people expect. Old English had "unmacian" in the sense of undoing or destroying something that had been made, and the verb has been in continuous use since then. The "un-" prefix attached to verbs is a native English device, so there is nothing borrowed here: the word grew from two common Germanic roots. The sense of "ruin completely" comes from the same logic as the basic meaning. To unmake a thing is to reverse the process that produced it, so the destruction is total in a way that "break" or "damage" are not: the object is returned to the state of raw material. That is why the word can be applied to a person's reputation or a nation's order as easily as to a physical object.