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Glite Dictionary
↔️ To move off-center 🔄 To shift focus
to decenter

to decenter

7.5
To move focus away from a main person, idea, or point of view
  • verb
  • /diːˈsɛntər/
translation icon : descentrar
  • In her lecture, she encouraged students to decenter dominant narratives in history.
  • decenter the subject
  • identity is decentered
  • human beings become decentered

And like me going to Dorchester, I think there's nothing more decentering than the real world out there.

Examples

  • The Origin of Species is, in a way, a long story of exactly this kind, teaching us to decenter the human.

    Academic text (1995)

  • A broad perspective of migration that decenters the United States and views the migration process in its entirety leads inexorably to world history.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Why would we shift or decenter authority to allow students who are feared to have a position of power?

    Academic text (2012)

  • What are you doing, personally, in your life to decenter your whiteness?

    Am I Racist? (2024)

  • These people haven't even started to decenter their whiteness.

    Am I Racist? (2024)

  • Just talk to me about, uh, decentering your whiteness and where you are on that journey.

    Am I Racist? (2024)

  • Can human beings become decentered instead of insisting on rights, etc.?

    Academic text (1997)

  • His evolutionary theory, "Descent by Variation through Natural Selection," notoriously decentered the human.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Pendell decenters the human experience and shifts the attention to the slow violence of anthropogenic climate change.

    Academic text (2018)

  • I want to decenter questions of writing and textuality and shift to another disciplinary activity: that of reviewing ethnographies.

    Academic text (1993)

Synonyms

to deflect attention
vsto decenter
6 5.2

To make people look at something else to avoid criticism

shifts focus away from a central or dominant point without targeting faults
to defocus
vsto decenter
6.7

To move attention away from something so people think about it less

shifts focus away from a central or dominant point
to deconcentrate
vsto decenter
  • Formal
8.3

To move power and services from a central office to local offices

shifts attention or perspective rather than reorganizing authority

Antonyms

to centralize
  • US
10 5.6

To move work and control into one place or under one leader

How Central

to center
  • US
210 2.8
to downplay
59 5.3
to decenter
7.5
to ignore
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

decenter infinitive
decentered past
decentered past participle
decentering present participle
decents third person singular

Morphology

decenter = center (semi-transparent) = de + center

The relation to 'center' is clear, but the abstract discourse meaning of shifting attention away from a dominant perspective is somewhat specialized.

Etymology

Decenter starts with de- meaning 'away' and the word center, and it is often used for ideas or power too. So to decenter is to move attention, focus, or power away from one main point or person.