English
deracinate
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /dɪˈɹæsɪnaɪt/
Verb

deracinate (deracinates, present participle deracinating; past and past participle deracinated)

  1. To pull up by the roots; to uproot; to extirpate.
    • 1602, Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
      Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
      The unity and married calm of states
      Quite from their fixture!
    • 1910, G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, chapter 1.7
      The State has no tool delicate enough to deracinate the rooted habits and tangled affections of the family; the two sexes, whether happy or unhappy, are glued together too tightly for us to get the blade of a legal penknife in between them.
  2. To force (people) from their homeland to a new or foreign location.
  3. (transitive, intransitive) To liberate or be liberated from a culture or its norms.
    • 1986 Robert McCrum, William Cran, & Robert MacNeil, The Story of English, Viking Penguin Inc., p328:
      Observing the highest echelons of Indian society, she notes the way in which some Indians become completely — almost absurdly — anglicized or deracinated.
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