desiccate · verb — to remove moisture from; to dry; (sometimes) to dry to an extreme degree. It carries an Arena rating of 1704, earned across 48 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, desiccate ranks #1,444 of 17,166 for Most Vivid Words, #2,117 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words, #2,762 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,945 of 17,180 for Most Ingenious Words.
desiccate is pronounced /ˈdɛsɪkeɪt/.
Why “desiccate” is a great word
DESICCATE — [Verb] To remove moisture from something thoroughly, often for the purpose of preservation. From Latin dēsiccāre, from dē- ("completely, thoroughly") + siccāre ("to dry"), from siccus ("dry"). First attested in English in the 1570s. Unlike "dehydrate," which often concerns living tissue, or "parch," which implies a scorching heat, to desiccate is a clinical, exhaustive act of aridification. It is the silica gel packet in a box of new shoes, the hollowed husk of a beetle under a porch light, and the precise, brittle pages of a centuries-old herbarium—a stillness born not of fire, but of absolute, final withdrawal, leaving only the ghost of form behind.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From Latin dēsiccō (“to dry completely, dry up”) + -ate (verb-forming suffix), from dē- (“completely, to exhaustion”, a prefix) + siccō (“to dry; to drain, exhaust”), from siccus (“dry”) + -ō (first conjugation verb-forming suffix). By surface analysis, de- + siccate.
verb
- To remove moisture from; to dry; (sometimes) to dry to an extreme degree.
- To preserve by drying.e.g.“The nuts are then passed into a double disc machine, and this travelling at a speed of 3,000 revolutions per minute desiccates the coconut.” — 1929 July, “Uncle Gib”, “Children’s Corner”, in Gibsonia Gazette, volume 3, number 8, Perth, W.A.: Issued by the House of Foy & Gibson, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 Apr 2019, page 6:
- To become dry; to dry up.
adj
- Having had moisture removed; dehydrated, desiccated.
noun
- A substance which has been desiccated, that is, had its moisture removed.e.g.“The Cy dyes are shipped as a desiccate in sealed packs.” — 2011, Virgil A. Rhodius, Carol A. Gross, “Using DNA Microarrays to Assay Part Function”, in Christopher Voigt, editor, Methods in Enzymology, volumes 497 (Synthetic Biology, Part A; Methods for Part/D
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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