disintoxicate

English

Etymology

dis- +‎ intoxicate

Verb

disintoxicate (third-person singular simple present disintoxicates, present participle disintoxicating, simple past and past participle disintoxicated)

1. (medicine) To neutralize the intoxicating effects of
   • 1918, New York Medical Journal - Volume 108, page 57:

     We all admit an individual, functional power for the elimination of waste products which, as life goes on, is likely to lessen, a stage being reached at which the cells, especially those of the liver, if not of other organs, have diminished or lost their function to disintoxicate certain products of disturbed and lowered metabolism, which retained in the body predispose or cause the clinical symptoms of asthma and hay fever.

2. (medicine) To remove or counter an intoxicating substance from
   • 1903, Albert Henry Buck, Thomas Lathrop Stedman, A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences Embracing the Entire Range of Scientific and Practical Medicine and Allied Science, Volume 6, page 412:

     We are justified in assuming, therefore, that one of the functions of the suprarenals is to disintoxicate the blood.

   • 1912, The Medical World - Volume 30, page 336:

     Failure to relieve chronic constipation by the employment of such vegetable drugs as are commonly combined in the so-called anti-constipation pills or tablets results from the simple fact that these agents do not disintoxicate the muscular coat of the intestinal tract.

   • 1923, Therapeutic Gazette - Volume 47, page 754:

     This time may vary from a few days up to a month or more, and the amount of salt solution necessary to disintoxicate the patient may vary from 750 cc once a day to 1000 cc three times a day.

3. To disenchant; to restore a realistic perspective.
   • 1966, Edmund O. Stillman, William Pfaff, Power and Impotence: The Failure of America's Foreign Policy:

     Our greatest need vis-a-vis China would seem to be somehow to disintoxicate the issue.

   • 1993, A. Trevor Tolley, Roy Fuller: A Tribute, page 30:

     In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.

   • 2006, Alexander Stille, The Sack of Rome:

     I want to disintoxicate myself from TV.

   • 2012, Aurelian Crăiuțu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds:

     They acknowledged the complex nature of politics and the fragility of political liberty and the social order, and they attempted “to disintoxicate minds and calm fanaticism.”

Anagrams

• disexcitation