A.Word.A.Day --decorticate

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decorticate

PRONUNCIATION:

(dee-KOR-ti-kayt)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To remove the outer layer, such as the bark, husk, rind, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin decorticare (to peel), from de- (from) + cortex (bark). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sker- (to cut), which is also the source of skirt, curt, screw, shard, shears, carnage, carnivorous, carnation, sharp, scrape, and excoriate. Earliest documented use: 1611.

USAGE:

"The idea, the sensation, the moment of intuition are decorticated and communicated with intimacy and lucidity."
Marguerite Dorian; Demon in Brackets; World Literature Today; Jun 1995.

See more usage examples of decorticate in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born. -William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)

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