Thursday word: deracinate

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

deracinate - v., to pull up by the roots, uproot; displace from one's native environment.


Also, by metaphoric extension, forced resettlement. This would make a pretty good name for an alterna-rock band, of the young & disaffected type, though the word can also have a positive sense of liberating or being liberated from a culture or its norms. The noun form is deracination. Adopted in 1599 (and used soon after by Shakespeare) from French déraciner, from Old French desraciner, de-root, from Latin roots de-, in the sense of undo + radix, root.

Och, and the girls whose poor hearts you deracinate,
Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate
Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate, —
Murder’s the word for you, Barney McGee!

—Richard Hovey, Barney McGee

---L.