detune
Word family
Synonym discussion
Sense: verb/1
Detune is the most common term for deliberately moving a radio or electronic device away from its correct frequency — it is the standard verb in radio-operating manuals, amateur radio hobby guides, and electronics tutorials. Mistune is far rarer and usually implies a minor adjustment by accident rather than by intention; you might say 'the dial was mistuned during shipping' but not 'I mistuned the receiver on purpose'. Untune is now mostly poetic or archaic — it appears in 19th-century literature for string instruments falling out of pitch ('the violin untuned itself in the damp air'), but sounds dated when applied to electronics. Of the three, only detune takes clearly intentional contexts without sounding odd. In everyday radio operation, detune is the reliable choice: 'I detuned the receiver to cut out the interference.' Stick with detune unless you need to emphasise accidental mistuning or want an old-fashioned literary tone.
Common collocations
Etymology
Formed in the early 20th century, around the time radio broadcasting became widespread, by adding the prefix de- (from Latin, meaning 'away from' or 'reverse of') to the verb tune. Tune itself traces back through Middle English and Old French ton ('a tone') to Latin tonus ('sound, tone'). So detune literally means 'to reverse the tuning'—to take a device away from its correctly adjusted frequency.