deobstruct
English
Etymology
Verb
deobstruct (third-person singular simple present deobstructs, present participle deobstructing, simple past and past participle deobstructed)
- (chiefly medicine) To clear (something) of obstructions.[1]
- Synonym: unblock
- 1664, Jeremy Taylor, A Dissuasive from Popery to the People of Ireland, Dublin: John Crooke, Preface to the Reader,[2]
- […] we humbly desire of God […] [that] he will be pleas’d to convey to them [the people of Ireland] the notices of their danger, and their sin, and to deobstruct the passages of necessary truth to them,
- 1732, John Arbuthnot, Practical Rules of Diet, London: J. Tonson, Chapter 1, section 19, p. 274,[3]
- 1850, Edward Tilt, On Diseases of Menstruation and Ovarian Inflammation, London: John Churchill, Chapter 5, p. 144,[4]
- […] he exhibited an instrument which he had invented for deobstructing the Fallopian tubes in such cases.
Related terms
References
- ^ Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, London, 1755: “DEOBSTRUCT, […] To clear from impediments; to free from such things as hinder a passage.”[1]