declassify

UK/diːˈklæsɪfaɪ/

verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — class sits at #354neutral

Other forms: declassified, declassifying

To declassify is to release something from official secrecy. Declassify the papers after thirty years.

Most countries release records after a set period, and the interesting ones are held back longer. To declassify a document often reveals that the secret was an embarrassment rather than a danger.

Definitions of declassify

1verbdeclassifyTo release something from official secrecy.C1
“They agreed to declassify the file after fifty years.”

declassify is a releasing.

Where it comes from

French
classifier
English
classify
English, today
declassify

From de- + classify. classify comes from French classifier. by surface analysis, class + -ify.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Spying & Secrecy

Practise this word

declassify in the wild

Sanitize or declassify DoD POW/MP documents and related materials for disclosure and release in accordance with 50 U.S.
Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office
Thornburgh refused to declassify information needed for his defense.
Joseph F. Fernandez
The team worked to declassify information from the agency's files and as of June 2006 had released 27,000 pages from 174 files, much of it new material.
Stanley Moskowitz
After five decades of the Indian government failing to declassify the Henderson-Brooks report, Maxwell later uploaded part of the report online and authored the book India's China War.
Neville Maxwell
All names were supposedly kept in secrecy but the government was forced to declassify all the names after a successful intervention by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
List of NRO beneficiaries

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the classifier family

classified

declassify — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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