Other forms: undressed, undressing, undresses
To undress is to take your clothes off. Undress for bed, get undressed, undress the child.
Get undressed is the commoner form in speech. It is also transitive: undress the patient. The un- reverses the action, as in undo and untie. Note undressed, which of a person means without clothes and of a salad means without dressing; and that in a state of undress is a formal and slightly arch phrase used in newspapers and Victorian novels for exactly the same thing.
1verbundressTo take clothes off.
“The nurse asked him to undress and put on a hospital gown.”
undress is a removing of clothes.
The word is un- plus dress, and dress came from Old French dresser, to arrange or make straight. Undressing is un-arranging yourself, which is a milder image than the word usually carries.
Middle English
undressen
English, today
undress
From Middle English undressen, equivalent to un + dress. Compare Old English unsċrȳdan (“to undress”) literally “un-shroud”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA