Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To break down into components; dismantle.
- v. To write about or analyze (a literary text, for example), following the tenets of deconstruction.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To take apart (what has been put together); undo the construction of; undo (what has been done).
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To interpret (a text or an artwork) by the method of deconstruction.
WordNet 3.0
- v. interpret (a text or an artwork) by the method of deconstructing
Examples
“Being able to "deconstruct" requires speaking and understanding a certain type of language, and subscribing to certain intellectual theories.”
“I've found that when I "deconstruct" an art to develop variations, my original notes seem very simplistic.”
“It might be helpful to "deconstruct" this conversation.”
“And so if you don't beat the military uniform hard enough, we like to drop the roll, like, as soon as we put the fiber, the combat paper project through its workshops seeks to allow the veteran to kind of deconstruct their uniform and deconstruct their experiences in a very comfortable environment and create cathartic works of art.”
“Callow wants to "deconstruct" the Welles story, see the real man who made himself a myth in cahoots with a pushover press.”
“The left that so loves to "deconstruct" everything about Western culture and faith can't seem to recognize their own new religion or their zealous resistance to any deconstruction of their new god object.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“You say we should "deconstruct" all truth claims (a founder of "deconstructionism," Paul de Man. whose writings are still influential in American universities, was a Belgian fascist) because there are no facts, only opinions?”
“But what I wanted to mention was how much I enjoyed the recent Simpson's Super Spectactular that criticized all these writers who always want to "deconstruct" some long running hero in a grim and cynical way.”
“To "deconstruct" philosophy, thus, would be to think-—in the most faithful, interior way—-the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine—-from a certain exterior that is unqualifiable or unnameable by philosophy—-what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into a history by means of this somewhere motivated repression.”
“Here Wood follows Brian Harley, who in turn drew on social theorists such as Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens to "deconstruct" cartography as "a form of political discourse concerned with the acquisition and maintenance of power," specifically the power of the state (Brian Harley, "Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe," Imago Mundi 40 [1988]: 57-76).”
Where Women Make History: Gendered Tellings of Community and Change in Magude, Mozambique
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘deconstruct’.
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WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
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Undo
A list of terms that denote separating one thing from another, or deconstructing a thing into its parts or to a former state. E.g., untie, divorce, unscramble.
untie, divorce, unscramble, disunite, disjoin, undo, separate, disassemble, uncouple, unhitch, disassociate, disaffiliate and 185 more...
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Culture Jamming
appropriate, subvertise, adbust, detournement, carnivalesque, remix, mashup, critical, protest, subvertisement, adbusting, disrupt and 47 more...
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Favorite Words
Fun words that are interesting and arresting.
Ort, unctuous, panoply, defenestrate, palpable, ubiquitous, flagellate, serendipitous, epiphanic, constructivist, amuse bouche, sobriquet and 30 more...
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Words from "Pearls Before Breakfast"
nondescript, shrewd, seed money, bureaucrat, indeterminate, fungible, cupidity, banal, grandeur, utilitarian, buffer, ecstatic and 123 more...
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boychoir's Words
tantamount, nom de guerre, absurd, dolt, transmute, dichotomy, dandy, schadenfreude, ennui, binary, analog, obfuscate and 93 more...
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INTERP - VOCABULARY
The vocabulary of conference interpreting. I commend this list to those who want to know more about the profession and to those who wish to organize their knowledge about the profession. To aspirin...
retour language, A-language, B-language, C-language, relay language, take sy on relay, language booth, booth meeting, mic, mike, mission, freelance interpr... and 2086 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1707 more...
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Words I detest
irregardless, myriad, awesome, random, premium, deserve, inappropriate, obscene, biased, cabal, eschew, firmament and 13 more...
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soxfan1302's list
this is my list
insolent, objective, subjective, faux, benevolent, biased, wane, immature, mature, abdicate, vigor, hangdog and 50 more...
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Offensive to the Mind
post-punk, post-rock, postmodern, web 2.0, deconstruct, connotation, symbolism, theme, didacticism, bathos, lol, literature and 3 more...
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LitCrit Triple Word Score
intertextual, metafiction, structural, seminal, subject, ideological, problematic, gratification, identification, gender, solipsistic, deconstruct and 13 more...
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awful words you should never say
monetize, cognitive dissonance, tipping point, aspirational, sucks, gnarly, deconstruct, unique, interesting, panties, synergy, postmodern and 10 more...
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UC Santa Cruz most used words
hegemony, deconstruction, misogyny, patriarchy, intertextuality, diaspora, herstory, phallus, deconstruct
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You Look Nice Today
For words brought to my attention by the wonderful podcast You Look Nice Today.
spit-take, comatose, condiment, terrine, deconstruct, docile, harbinger
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bad academics
tech-term word-creationism
liminal, postmodern, deconstruct, dichotomize, jargonaut, normative, heteronormative
Tweets
Looking for tweets for deconstruct.

backroadsbyron I have never seen this word used until the last year or two, and just the other day I saw deconstruct used by a sports writer. The first time I saw it was in an art lecture anouncement. I thought why don't they use words the common people can understand, snobs. I would be hard pressed to use deconstruct....meaningless to most of us....let's deconstruct the myth of the Federal Reserve. Mar 31, 2009