deobstruct
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Verb
[edit]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[2], Dublin: John Crooke, Preface to the Reader:
- […] 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[3], London: J. Tonson, Chapter 1, section 19, p. 274:
- 1850, Edward Tilt, chapter 5, in On Diseases of Menstruation and Ovarian Inflammation[4], London: John Churchill, page 144:
- […] he exhibited an instrument which he had invented for deobstructing the Fallopian tubes in such cases.
Related terms
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ 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]