You can tell the optimizer to not consider a particular index with the IGNORE INDEX option.
The benefit of using IGNORE_INDEX instead of USE_INDEX is that it will not disable a new index which you may add later.
Also see for an option to specify in the index definition that indexes should be ignored.
When using index hints (USE, FORCE or IGNORE INDEX), the index name value can also be an unambiguous prefix of an index name.
This is used after the table name in the FROM clause:
This produces:
See for more details
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IGNORE INDEX [{FOR {JOIN|ORDER BY|GROUP BY}] ([index_list])CREATE INDEX Name ON City (Name);
CREATE INDEX CountryCode ON City (Countrycode);
EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM City IGNORE INDEX (Name)
WHERE name="Helsingborg" AND countrycode="SWE";id select_type table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra
1 SIMPLE City ref CountryCode CountryCode 3 const 14 Using where