unsceptre

English

Alternative forms

unscepter

Etymology

un- + sceptre

Verb

unsceptre (third-person singular simple present unsceptres, present participle unsceptring, simple past and past participle unsceptred)

  1. To deprive of a sceptre; to deprive of the status of monarch or of authority.
    Synonyms: depose, dethrone, discrown, disenthrone, uncrown, unking, unthrone
    • 1634, William Wood, New Englands Prospect: A true, lively, and experimentall description of that part of America, commonly called New England, London: John Bellamie, Part 2, Chapter 10, p. 79,
      It is the custome for their Kings to inherite, the sonne alwayes taking the Kingdome after his fathers death. If there be no sonne, then the Queene rules; if no Queene, the next to the blood-royall, who comes in otherwise, is but counted an usurping intruder, and if his faire carriage beare him not out the better, they will soone unscepter him.
    • 1820, John Keats, Hyperion, Book I, in The Poetical Works of John Keats, London: Taylor and Walton, 1840, p. 155,
      Upon the sodden ground
      His [the god Saturn’s] old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
      Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
    • 1870, John Leicester Warren, “Pandora” in Rehearsals, London: Strahan, p. 23,
      Ye hate, shall hatred then unsceptre Zeus,
      Or anger empty any throne in heaven?
    • 1967, John Cairncross (translator), Berenice by Jean Racine, Act 3, Scene 1, in Andromache and Other Plays, Penguin, 1982, p. 255,
      I can make kings and unsceptre them,
      Yet cannot give my heart to whom I choose.

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