How to Use unmoor in a Sentence

unmoor

verb
  • One drawback to the scheme was that all those giant drains would drift unmoored through a stormy sea.
    — National Geographic, 13 Oct. 2017
  • Months later, unmoored and in need of care, Smith drifted to VA in search of help.
    — Alex Horton, BostonGlobe.com, 5 Mar. 2020
  • The sight of a fanatic severing the hand of a child accused of stealing unmoored him.
    — Lori Hinnant and and Maggie Michael, idahostatesman, 10 Dec. 2017
  • And when the adventure is over, the tent can simply be unmoored from the vehicle’s roof rack and propped against a garage wall until the next time nature calls.
    — Brigid Mander, WSJ, 4 Apr. 2018
  • The point is to transport viewers into the singer’s vibrant inner life, unmoored by reality.
    — Allegra Frank, Vox, 17 June 2019
  • Set around Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the six-hour drama feels unmoored by its new location.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 12 Sep. 2017
  • Economic jolts unmoored the city, which then turned to new industries for revitalization.
    — Patrick Sisson, Curbed, 1 May 2018
  • Months of personal upheaval had unmoored me, leaving me marginally employed and roving between apartment- and dog-sitting gigs.
    — Alison Kinney, Longreads, 10 Mar. 2018
  • That’s what happens when money floats into the ether of latter-day Wall Street, unmoored by connection to substance.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 13 July 2018
  • Most importantly, these apps buck one of the oldest stereotypes of treatment—that unmooring a person from their life is the only way to curb addiction.
    — Zachary Siegel, WIRED, 1 Apr. 2018
  • The floodgates were opened for ideas unmoored from experience and common sense, such as conspiracy theories.
    — Daniel Pipes, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2018
  • Libby’s sympathies — and ours — are suddenly unmoored in the conflicting currents of love and resentment.
    — Ron Charles critic, Washington Post, 13 June 2019
  • But his paranoia is unmoored from the current political climate, which makes the film’s final veer back to Ed’s obsession seem all the more forced and hollow.
    — Mark Jenkins, chicagotribune.com, 4 June 2019
  • Human populations, too, were unmoored by disruptions in weather patterns.
    — James Romm, WSJ, 27 Oct. 2017
  • No character reappears from one part to the next, but the book is unified by its sense of freedom as a disruptive force, as though its people were unmoored in something other than a physical sense.
    — Michael Gorra, New York Times, 19 Jan. 2018
  • As an artist, Sam Winston was often on the lookout for topsy-turvy projects – weird, sidelong ways to unmoor familiar habits or nudge his work in new directions.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 20 May 2020
  • And indeed, seeing Sandler transformed into Howard Ratner is unmooring for anyone who has spent enough time around him, onscreen or off.
    — Jamie Lauren Keiles, New York Times, 27 Nov. 2019
  • Branson said many of these hacks are impractical, dangerous, and unmoored from basic principles of physics and physiology.
    — Lindsay Beyerstein, The New Republic, 10 Apr. 2020
  • Three World Series victories in 13 years unmoored a lot of the tension and angst that centered the Red Sox narrative for decades.
    — Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 1 May 2017
  • The aftermath of that episode left McCain completely, if temporarily, unmoored from party doctrine.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 17 Oct. 2017
  • But Catherall, the psychologist, offered a profile of Siatta as a Marine utterly unmoored by war.
    — C. J. Chivers, New York Times, 28 Dec. 2016
  • Stranded in the claustrophobic scramble of Calcutta, his childlike stature is again used as visual shorthand, only this time for his helplessness, unmoored in this sea of people.
    — Esquire, 25 Feb. 2017
  • This announcement is partly the consequence of a White House that has been unmoored since Rob Porter’s departure amid allegations of abuse by his two ex-wives.
    — James Hohmann, Washington Post, 2 Mar. 2018
  • The granting of Indian independence—both overdue and, in execution, hasty—left him stunned and unmoored, and caused a fundamental rethinking of his views.
    — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 11 Nov. 2019
  • Fahey's swaggering thane falls apart easily once unmoored from his previous stance as a noble defender of Jack Hickey's Duncan.
    — Kerry Reid, chicagotribune.com, 26 June 2017
  • Academics were excited — and sometimes alarmed — by the radical approach of Jacques Derrida, who seemed set on unmooring the stability of language.
    — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2019
  • The courts should reject attempts to further unmoor the establishment clause from its historical foundation and thereby render religious liberty an anachronism.
    — Margot Cleveland, National Review, 19 Jan. 2018
  • Once the industry shifted to ready-to-wear, Capucci withdrew from the seasonal calendar to continue his craft, leaving his namesake line unmoored, despite several attempts to jump-start it.
    — Monica Kim, Vogue, 11 Mar. 2019
  • Most significantly, however, White House officials fear that Hicks’ departure will leave the president unmoored.
    — Vivian Salama, NBC News, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Together, these two interstellar objects are rewriting what researchers know about the icy bodies—estimated to number as many as 1026—that float unmoored throughout the Milky Way.
    — Alexandra Witze, Scientific American, 27 Nov. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unmoor.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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