Meaning & use

decompressing

verb·Everyday

Last updated

Releasing pressure from something, or relaxing after a period of stress or tension.

See it in a sentence

Divers must ascend slowly to avoid injury while decompressing.

After finals week, she spent the weekend decompressing at the lake.

A note on using this word

The figurative sense of "decompressing" to mean unwinding after stress became popular partly through comparison to divers safely releasing pressure.

Words with a similar meaning

relaxingunwindingdepressurizing

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Words with an opposite meaning

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