defecate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin dēfaecātus, the past participle of dēfaecō (“to cleanse from dregs, purify”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Barnhart traces the Latin verb, re-formed from dēficāre, to the phrase dē faece (“from dregs”),^[4][3] made up of dē (“from”) and faex (“dregs, sediment”), plural faecēs, the source of feces.^[4][2][7] Etymonline calls the noun of unknown origin.^[3] The English adjective, inherited from Middle English deficate in Merriam-Webster, is older than the verb according to Barnhart, who suggests that the verb's use may have been influenced by Middle French defequer;^[8][4] the OED, however, now records the verb first.^[2] Collins and the Shorter Oxford also list the spelling “defaecate”.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To remove dregs or impurities from; to purify or clarify: about 1487, in J. Skelton's translation of Diodorus Siculus, in the OED's revised entry.^[2] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date the verb to 1575,^[4][8] and Etymonline to the 1570s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

For more than three centuries the word had nothing to do with the body's waste, except that the Shorter Oxford notes an old use for purging something away.^[2][10] It meant to clear a liquid of its dregs, and Johnson (1755) defined it as to purge liquors from lees or foulness and to purify from any noxious mixture, quoting Boyle on oil of amber.^[11] A figurative use for ridding the mind or the morals of what is impure dates from the 17th century (1608, 1621), and is now rare.^[2][3] The purifying sense survives in sugar manufacture, for clarifying juice with a reagent.^[8][9] The modern meaning, to empty the bowels, is recorded in 1837 in a medical treatise,^[2] by 1849 in Etymonline, which thinks it probably came from French,^[3] and in the 1860s in the United States in Barnhart.^[4] Barnhart notes that defecation, in the sense of a discharge of feces, appeared in 1830 in an anatomy textbook translated from French, where it was used in that sense from 1754.^[4] The OED records French déféquer from 1583 for clearing a substance, and in the excretory sense only from 1910.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1487 – verb, to remove impurities from; to clarify.^[2]
• before 1505 – adjective, spiritually purified, free from corruption (obsolete).^[2]
• c. 1537 – adjective, of a substance, free from dregs (obsolete by 1754).^[2]
• 1608 – figurative, to rid of undesirable qualities.^[2]
• 1621 – to make morally or spiritually pure.^[2]
• 1774 – to remove dregs from a substance (obsolete, rare).^[2]
• 1837 – intransitive, to pass feces.^[2]
• 1906 – transitive, to eliminate something in or with the feces.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To discharge feces from the bowels.^{[9][8][2][12]}
2. To discharge something through the anus or with the feces: The birds defecate the seeds undigested.^[8][2]
3. To clarify a liquid, especially a sugar solution, by removing impurities.^[9][8][2]
4. (rare) To free from what is foreign or corrupting; to purge.^[8][2][10]

Adjective

1. (obsolete, before 1505–1754) Purified; free from dregs or corruption.^[2][8][10]

Word family

• defecation
• defecator

Related words

• feces

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins