unbow

From un- +‎ bow.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈbəʊ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈboʊ/
• Rhymes: -əʊ
• Hyphenation: un‧bow

unbow (third-person singular simple present unbows, present participle unbowing, simple past and past participle unbowed)

1. (transitive) To unbend (something).
   • 1639, Thomas Fuller, “Richard of England and Philip of France Set Forward to the Holy Land; the Danger of the Interveiws of Princes”, in The Historie of the Holy Warre, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Thomas Buck, one of the printers to the Universitie of Cambridge [and sold by John Williams, London], →OCLC, book III, page 118:

     Richard [I of England] was well ſtored with men, the bones; and quickly got money, the ſinews of warre; by a thouſand Princely skills gathering ſo much coin as if he meant not to return, becauſe looking back would unbowe his reſolution

   • 1653, Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme, or An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Minde of Man, whether There Be Not a God, London: […] Roger Daniel, […], →OCLC:

     As in little pieces of wood naturally bow'd like a Man's Elbow, the Carver doth not unbow it, but carves an hand at the one end of it, and shapes it into the compleat figure of a Mans Arm.

• “unbow”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.