Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To interview (a government agent, for example) at the end of an assignment, especially to obtain intelligence or to provide instructions regarding information that should be kept secret.
  • transitive verb To meet with (one who has undergone a traumatic or stressful experience), especially for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • verb to interrogate (a person) who has recently experienced an event, to obtain information about that experience; -- used especially of military pilots or diplomatic agents who have just returned from a mission.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To question someone after a military mission in order to obtain intelligence.
  • verb transitive To question someone, or a group of people, after the implementation of a project in order to learn from mistakes etc.
  • verb transitive To inform subjects of an experiment about what has happened in a complete and accurate manner.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb put someone through a debriefing and make him report

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

de- +‎ brief.

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