desiccate

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The Word of the Day for August 5 is:

desiccate   \DESS-ih-kayt\   verb
    *1 : to dry up or become dried up
     2 : to preserve (a food) by drying : dehydrate
     3 : to drain of emotional or intellectual vitality

Example sentence:
     Weeks of blazing heat along with a prolonged lack of rain have desiccated many of the plants in our garden.

Did you know?
     Raisins are desiccated grapes; they're also dehydrated grapes. And yet, a close look at the etymologies of "desiccate" and "dehydrate" raises a tangly question. In Latin "siccus" means "dry," whereas the Greek stem "hydr-" means "water." So how could it be that "desiccate" and "dehydrate" are synonyms? The answer is in the multiple identities of the prefix "de-." It may look like the same prefix, but the "de-" in "desiccate" means "completely, thoroughly," as in "despoil" ("to spoil utterly") or "denude" ("to strip completely bare"). The "de-" in "dehydrate," on the other hand, means "remove," the same as it does in "defoliate" ("to strip of leaves") or in "deice" ("to rid of ice").  




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