English

Noun

deconvert ‎(plural deconverts)

1. An apostate.

Verb

deconvert ‎(third-person singular simple present deconverts, present participle deconverting, simple past and past participle deconverted)

1. (intransitive) To undergo a deconversion from a religion, faith or belief or (transitive) to induce (someone) to reject a particular religion, faith, or belief.

   She has deconverted from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.

   They tried to deconvert him.

   • 1933, Sinclair Lewis, Ann Vickers, Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., p. 80

     Oh, I'm not going to try to deconvert them. No! Let them keep their faith, if they like it.

   • 1961, Catholic University of America, Herman Joseph Heuser, The American Ecclesiastical Review, Catholic University of America Press, etc., p. 236,

     The very devout and older Catholics are naturally inclined to see in the sudden North American fury to deconvert and decatholicize Hispanic America an enterprise that is not inspired by Christ but by the Devil, some sort of spiritual rape of the Latin republics.

   • 2003, Phil Zuckerman, Invitation to the Sociology of Religion, Routledge (UK), ISBN 0415941253, p. 29,

     The sociologist studying Mormonism is not out there to deconvert people, engage in historical or theological debates, destroy worldviews, or the like.

   • 2005, Anne Schiller, 'Our Heart Always Remembers, We Think of the Words as Long as We Live': Sacred Songs and the Revitalization of Indigenous Religion Among the Indonesian Ngaju, read in Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern (editors), Expressive Genres and Historical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, ISBN 0754644189, p.111,

     Some older adherents of Kaharingan reportedly deconvert from the traditional faith to Christianity for fear that their offspring will not conduct proper mortuary rituals on their behalf when it becomes necessary.

2. (intransitive) To revert or (transitive) to restore.
   • 1941, United States Congress: House: Appropriations, Fifth Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Bill for 1941: Hearings ... 77th Congress..., p. 122,

     We must arrange to deconvert chartered vessels if the owner so desires. He may want them put back in the same condition as when chartered.

   • 2000, Linda E. Reksten, Using Technology to Increase Student Learning, Corwin Press, ISBN 0803968140, p. 140,

     Most compression utilities...can convert and deconvert binhex files.

   • 2001, Nuclear Energy Agency, Management of Depleted Uranium: A Joint Report, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ISBN 9264195254, p. 21,

     Other organisations have investigated similar technologies or are developing alternative technologies to deconvert UF₆ to a stable oxide UF₄ or metal form.

   • 2005, Alexander Gelbukh, LINK (Online service), Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing: 6th International Conference, CICLing 2005, Springer, ISBN 3540245235, p.373,

     To generate the MA corresponding to a UNL graph, generate an “extended instance” of the UNL graph for each possible variant in that language, deconvert these UNL graphs, then continue as with normal translation...

3. (transitive) To change a building that has been converted to a new use back to its original use; specifically to change a house that has been converted into apartments or flats back to a single-family dwelling.
   • 1963, William E Glynn, Leadership Roles read in Paul Vernon Betters (editor), City Problems: The Annual Proceedings of the United States Conference of Mayors, City Problems: The Annual Proceedings of the United States Conference of Mayors, p. 86,

     Roofs were repaired, houses were painted, and rooming houses converted back to single family residences. And meanwhile the owners have spent about $60000 to deconvert the building to its legal use...Orders to deconvert buildings which had been cut up into smaller apartments totaled 156 last year compared with 77 in 1961.

   • 1968, New York (State): Governor's Commission Appointed to Review New York State's Abortion Law, Report..., p. 76,

     The most effective injunction issued was to compel owners to deconvert buildings illegally converted to their original architectural structure.

   • 2002, Paul N. Balchin, Maureen Rhoden, Housing Policy: An Introduction, Routledge (UK), ISBN 041525213X, p. 138,

     The supply of furnished accommodation might decline because landlords faced with rent regulation would prefer to occupy the whole of the property themselves, leave it empty or, given a house price boom, deconvert for owner-occupation.

   • 2005, United States Congress: House: Committee on Government Reform: Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census, A Top to Bottom Review of the Three-Decades-Old Community Development Block Grant Program..., ISBN 0160726964, p. 47,

     We've done a reasonably good job of trying to deconvert back to an owner-occupied setting.

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see Citations:deconvert.

References

• Problems in deconversion

Anagrams

• converted