This week’s theme
There’s an antonym for it

This week’s words
eustress
nullibiety
excarnation
dysphemism
nocebo

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(eks-kahr-NAY-shuhn)

MEANING:

noun:
1. The removing of flesh, especially from a corpse before burial.
2. The supposed separation of the soul from the body at death.

ETYMOLOGY:

From excarnate, from Latin excarnare (to remove flesh), from caro (flesh). Earliest documented use: 1847.

NOTES:

Examples:
• Excarnation takes place in a body farm in Texas State University in San Marcos. For science!
• Stonehenge may have been constructed for excarnation.
• The Parsi (Zoroastrian) community in India is concerned about the lack of vultures needed for excarnation.

USAGE:

“I looked at Sam. ‘Why didn’t they bury people here? Would they just leave the body in a chamber? Wouldn’t animals get at them?’
She shook her head. ‘They didn’t bury them. They did excarnation. Afterward they’d arrange the bones in a grave.’”
Elizabeth Hand; Hard Light; Thomas Dunne Books; 2016.

“The move toward excarnation is apparent in what is becoming more and more a fleshless society. In medicine, ‘bedside manner’ and hand on pulse has ceded to the anonymous technologies of imaging in diagnosis and treatment.”
Richard Kearney; Losing Our Touch; The New York Times; Aug 30, 2014.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: