deconstruction

UK: /ˌdiːkənˈstrʌkʃ^ən/ US: (dē′kən struk′shən)

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

de•con•struc•tion  (dē′kən struk′shən), n. 

1. Literature a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and esp. applied to the study of literature, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.

• de- + construction

de′con•struc′tion•ist, adj., n. 
de′con•struc′tive, adj. 

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

deconstruction / ˌdiːkənˈstrʌkʃən/ noun

1. a technique of literary analysis that regards meaning as resulting from the differences between words rather than their reference to the things they stand for. Different meanings are discovered by taking apart the structure of the language used and exposing the assumption that words have a fixed reference point beyond themselves