detrivore and deterge and derailleur and deodar and desmid and destrier and saprophagous

Demulce is another one of those canorous Latin verbs that you just want to sing to your beloved. Only demulcent, meaning "soothing," appears in the Collegiate, but you know that behind every sturdy noun stands a selfless verb. The OED tells us that it was formerly used of soothing medications, but when you scratch a little further, you realize that it has a wonderful mythological, philosophical past. From 1530: "Wherwith Saturne was eftsones demulced and appaysed." In his famous work of Puritan divinity, The Reformed Pastor, Richard Baxter could say, "As Seneca (the Stoic philosopher) said to demulce the angry." The 19th-20th centuries brought us medicine, and that is a real boon. But we often don't realize that the field of medicine made its entry by taking away lots of good words, like demulce, and using them only for its own purposes. And, once medicine uses a word, it tends to kill it, at least for normal usage. Let's start a cheer, "Don't mulct us of demulce!" What kind of trumpet would that sound?

Quickly, then, desquamate means to remove the scales (Latin squama) from something. Synonyms are also to scale, peel, or exfoliate. Naturally the primary usage of this word is in botany and anatomy, "As anatomists call it, desquamating: by which they mean, that the cuticle..comes off in squamae or scales." I wonder if any Valley Girl, after sitting in the hot LA sun on Venice Beach would have turned to her girlfriend and said, "Horrors! I'm desquamating!" And, after you finish protesting outside of medical schools with your banner, "Don't mulct us of demulce!" you might want to stand outside the salons of America and gently remind them, "Desquamate not decorticate!"

Finally, deterge means to "wipe away; to wash off or out, cleanse." Again, the OED says it is "chiefly, in Medical use." Giving up our birthright to the physicians for a mess of medical porridge once again. I would think that theologians and preachers would jump on this term with eagerness. A whole new generation of books would come leaping from the presses describing how Jesus deterges from all sin. Preachers desperately need someone to throw them the life raft of language today.

Back to the List

Hold your hat. Decuple means tenfold or in groups of ten. Be sure to distinguish this from decouple, which means to separate. Spell it right: deductible, even if you don't take it on your Schedule A. Someone deedy is industrious and a deerberry is an edible fruit. Deet, for some reason, is an insect repellent, and def means cool. Deffer means cooler, and I bet you know what deffest means. But who uses this word? What is the sense of having a word meaning cool if no one uses it? Isn't that uncool or undef? Someone who is degage is nonchalant or disengaged, while degringolade is a rapid decline or deterioration. Deictic means pointing out directly and deixis means almost the same (both pronounced with long "i's"). The deil (DE il) is the devil in Scottish, which I am sure you were dying to know, and deinonychus (pronounced die Non..) was a sort of dinosaur. To deke someone is to fake them out and dele is short for delete. Something delish is delicious, while a demantoid is a green garnet. Something demersal lives near the bottom of the sea (where many people think lawyers live) and a demimondaine is a woman supported by a wealthy lover. Isn't that a much more elevated term than the male counterpart gigolo? Makes you wonder. Then, one of my favorites, a demisemiquaver is a thirty-second note. You could play several of them in the time it takes you to pronounce demisemiquaver.

Finishing up, then, we have dene (DEEN), which is a valley, Deneb, a star of first magnitude, and dengue (DEN gee), an acute infectious disease transmitted by some mosquitoes. Dentifrice is for cleaning teeth. Be sure to note that the second vowel is an "i," and, of course, remember to floss at night. Differentiate between dentil, an architectural term, and dental. A deodar is an east Indian cedar and a derailleur is a bike mechanism. The dermestid is a family of beetles, literally the "leather eaters," because the young are very destructive to leather. Fonz be warned. Desmid are green algae, but I don't see how the Spelling Bee folk could use it in a sentence, and a destrier is a war horse or charger used in medieval tournaments.

Conclusion

Finally, as we come to the end, make sure you know that there is an "a" in detestable, and that you know that a detrivore is something that lives on dead matter. I actually like the term detrivore, coming as it does from detritus, or debris, and vorax, "having an insatiable appetite" or "ravenous." Just last night I learned the word saprophagous, which is in the Collegiate, and which means the same thing but is derived from the Greek. I love how we can have two Latin roots and two Greek roots, each in two different words, to express the identical concept in English. Sort of like piscivorous and ichthyophagous. I sure resonate with words like this, though I don't think that everyone does. Correct that. I think that few do.

1034