uncrown

un- +‎ crown

uncrown (third-person singular simple present uncrowns, present participle uncrowning, simple past and past participle uncrowned)

1. To deprive of the monarchy or other authority or status.

   Synonyms: depose, dethrone, discrown, disenthrone, unking, unthrone

   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act III, Scene 3,

     Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong,

     And therefore I’ll uncrown him ere’t be long.

   • 1807, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare, London: Thomas Hodgkins, “King Lear,” p. 199,

     […] this poor fool clung to Lear after he had given away his crown, and by his witty sayings would keep up his good humour, though he could not refrain sometimes from jeering at his master for his imprudence in uncrowning himself, and giving all away to his daughters;

   • 1860, Walt Whitman, “Chants Democratic, 2” Stanza 19, in Leaves of Grass, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, p. 136,

     I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,

     I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,

     Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected kings,

     Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.

   • 1902, Charles Robert Ashbee, Masque of the Edwards of England, page 7

     And in the reign of this king was it shown, how though God may choose a king and set him on a throne, […] yet a people is also of God, a part of God, and they may uncrown him, destroy him and cast him forth if he act unkingly.

2. To remove a crown from (often figuratively).
   • 1648, Edward Sherburne (translator), Medea a Tragedie by Seneca the Younger, London: Humphrey Moseley, Act IV, Scene 1, p. 39,

     When rigid Cold in Ice hath all things bound,

     And Forrests of their Summers pride uncrown’d.

   • 1655, Richard Fanshawe (translator), The Lusiad by Luís de Camões, London: Humphrey Moseley, Canto 6, Stanza 79, p. 132,

     How many mountains did the waves uncrown,

     Bouncing against them like a batt’ring Ram!

   • 1697, John Dryden (translator), Vergil’s Aeneid, Book 12, lines 448-449, in The Works of Virgil, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 591,

     Greedy of Spoils, th’ Italians strip the dead

     Of his rich Armour; and uncrown his Head.

   • 1717, Samuel Croxall (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. Translated by the most eminent hands, London: Jacob Tonson, Book 6, p. 184,

     Go then, with Speed your laurel’d heads uncrown,

     And leave the silly Farce you have begun.

• uncrowned