deoculate

English

Etymology

de- +‎ oculo- +‎ -ate; coined by Charles Lamb in a letter to William Wordsworth written in 1897: "Dorothy, I hear, has mounted spectacles; so deoculated two of your dearest relations in life. "

Verb

deoculate (third-person singular simple present deoculates, present participle deoculating, simple past and past participle deoculated)

1. To remove the eyes or their equivalent from
   • 1976, The New Yorker - Volume 52, Part 5, page 188:

     "Lear" and "We Come to the River" have much in common, beyond the scene of deoculating the straitjacketed protagonist: images of brutality, executions, and jubilation; of soldiers starting to question their orders ("They make you do things no one should even have to dream of and cheer you when you've done it"); of suffering; and — fleeting yet powerful in both works— of a peaceful family life in which children's questions are asked and answered about the marvels of the natural world, not about hardships and unhappiness.

   • 1984, Books and Bookmen, page 25:

     Big Mac's cancer is miraculously cured when he deoculates one of the severed heads and sinks them both out in the bay.

   • 2002, Timon Screech, The Lens Within the Heart:

     Sadly deoculated by his enemy, the Genji, after defeat, Kagekiyo lives out his days in darkened solitude, visited finally by his long-lost daughter.

   • 2010, Nick Gevers, Marty Halpern, Is Anybody Out There?:

     “Did you know,” said Roderick, “that St. Lucy had beautiful eyes, so she was deoculated as a martyrdom? Her symbol is a pair of eyes on a saucer.”