deoculate means to remove the eyes or their equivalent from (someone). It carries an Arena rating of 1432, earned across 45 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, deoculate ranks #62 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #267 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #525 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,153 of 17,151 for The Improbable.
Why “deoculate” is a great word
DEOCULATE — [Verb] To remove the eyes from a person or creature. From the English prefix de- ("removal") and the Latin oculus ("eye"), combined with the verb-forming suffix -ate; coined in 1816 by Charles Lamb. Unlike "blind" (which describes the deprivation of sight by any means) or "enucleate" (which denotes a precise surgical extraction), to deoculate is a singular and brutal act of rendering void. It is the hot press of thumbs against yielding orbits, the deliberate hollowing of a portrait to leave dark sockets, or the mythic justice visited upon one who has seen too much—a violence that transforms a window into a wound, leaving only a dark geography where light once entered.
Etymology
From de- + oculo- + -ate (verb-forming suffix); coined by Charles Lamb in a letter to William Wordsworth written in 1816: "Dorothy, I hear, has mounted spectacles; so deoculated two of your dearest relations in life. ".
verb
- To remove the eyes or their equivalent from (someone).
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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