unspike

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ spike.

Verb

unspike (third-person singular simple present unspikes, present participle unspiking, simple past and past participle unspiked)

1. To remove a spike from.
   • 1862, James Gilchrist Benton, A Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery, page 261:

     To unspike a cannon, attempt to drive the spike into the bore with a punch; if this succeeds, and the bore be obstructed, introduce powder into the vent to force the obstacle out.

   • 1940, United States. National Railroad Adjustment Board, Awards - Third Division, National Railroad Adjustment Board, page 470:

     However, neither the wording of the agreement nor the conduct of the parties under it lends support to the proposition that Signal Maintainers have a right either to demand that they be allowed to unspike and spike hand switches or that they be compensated when an employee of some other class performs such work.

   • 1941, Harry Edwin Jones, Inquiry of the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure Relating to the National Railroad Adjustment Board, page 321:

     It became necessary to move out some of the stored cars, and the carrier used a track foreman to unspike the switch. The spike had to be removed by the use of crowbars and other tools which were in the track foreman's custody.

   • 1994, FDA Enforcement Report, page 6:

     Machine automatically unspikes the old bag and spikes the new bag .

   • 2001, Ambrose Bierce, David E. Schultz, S. T. Joshi, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary, page 256:

     Oh, I'm penitent enough for the Seventh Heaven, but as to kneeling, observe, good friend, how the wicked have transfixed my extremities with nails! Why, bless you, I can move neither hand nor foot! Unspike me , friend - withdraw the iron restraints of the law and see how quickly I will kneel [upon the body of some one whom I hate. It is the dream of my life!]

   • 2013, Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, Gordon M. Sayre, Carla Zecher, The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747, page 304:

     He sent for some skilled blacksmiths to make the necessary tools to try to unspike them, and while this was being done, the lieutenant at Talut sent a soldier with a letter addressed to the commandant of the marines, to ask him whether he should obey the order he had received from his captain to spike the cannons.

   unspiking the vent of a cannon

2. To make or become less spiky.
   • 2010, Peter Helton, Falling More Slowly:

     He can easily unspike his hair and float the skateboard down the river.

   • 2011, Tricia Fields, The Territory: A Mystery, page 81:

     Josie had interviewed Colt for an evening dispatcher's position about a year ago, but the girl had refused to unspike her hair or remove her facial piercings.

   • 2017, Jill Shalvis, A Royal Mess:

     Her hair was beginning to unspike, and her clothes were plastered to her like a second skin.

3. To return to a normal level after a very high spike.
   • 1993, John L. Power, Preliminary Investigation of High Power Microwave Plasmas, page 7:

     The applied (or absorbed) microwave power in the plasma does not appear to have a first order affect on the conditions at which the plasma either spikes or unspikes.

   • 2001, Nicholas A. Christakis, Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care, page 174:

     And everybody thought for sure that this woman would never, ever leave the hospital. That she'd never unspike [ return to normal body temperature ], that she'd develop antibiotic-resistant germs, that she couldn't have physical therapy, couldn't have her wound handled couldn't have this stuff done.

   • 2009, Bruce W. Lites, The Second Hinode Science Meeting, page 16:

     The TRACE images were calibrated using the TRACE instrument software package, trace-prep, including wave2point, destreak, deripple, unspike, and normalize.

4. To neutralize the alcohol (or other adulterant) in a food, drink, or other substance.
   • 1984, Red Book - Volume 163:

     HOW TO UNSPIKE OUR SWEETS Our spiked desserts ( pages 104-105 ) have real punch!

Noun

unspike (plural unspikes)

1. An instance of unspiking (any sense).
   • 1980, John M Bell, Proceedings: Purdue University Industrial Waste Conference, page 769:

     This included an unspike oxygen uptake of mixed liquor, and a mixed liquor sample spiked with 10% by volume primary effluent.

   • 2013, Richard H. Palmquist, Einstein, Money and Contentment, page 55:

     The sonogram and the cardiogram chart reflect the forward push of the heart shoving the blood through the veins: the unspike.

   • 2019, Therese Biedl, Erin Wolf Chambers, David Eppstein, Arnaud De Mesmay, Tim Ophelders, “Homotopy Height, Grid-Major Height and Graph-Drawing Height”, in Daniel Archambault, Csaba D. Tóth, editor, Graph Drawing and Network Visualization, page 476:

     Compared to the case of simple homotopies, in a (non-simple) homotopy, we remove the hypothesis that the curves are simple and we allow two new moves, spikes and unspikes, leveraging this non-simplicity.

References

• “unspike”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• punkies